of the Drapers' Biometric Laboratory and the Galton Eugenics Laboratory was completed in 1914. This building contains a public lecture theater, a public museum and library, archive and instrument rooms, anthropometric laboratories and investigation rooms, besides full provision for laboratory and class teaching, with private rooms for research workers. The building was used for war purposes and money is now needed to complete its equipment. Professor Pearson writes:

The Biometric and the Galton Laboratories were the first of their kind to be established; they no longer stand alone. The United States have their professors of biometry and their eugenics laboratories backed by funds which we can not hope to rival. Why is it that Britain so often starts the new idea, but leaves it to fructify in other lands? Especially important is at the present moment the field of activity for our science. The war has brought many problems to the fore; eugenical research has much ground to make up, and most serious questions as to national efficiency are demanding scientific treatment. The Galton Laboratory is in every respect in a worse position in 1919 than it was in 1914; its staff has to undertake far heavier and more urgent work than it then dreamt of; its buildings can not be properly equipped; its publication funds, slender in 1914, can not now encompass a third of what was possible at that date, for the price of printing, binding and publication is now nearly threefold; memoirs awaiting publication. can not be issued. And, lastly, the highly-trained staff, largely absorbed into national work during the past five years, can not be reestablished on the old basis, for the old scale of payment has ceased to provide a living wage. The war has in many cases crippled institutions as well as men. Are we to see the scheme of one of the most suggestive and inspiring men of modern times and a science wholly British in its inception reduced to infruition because the university and the Galton Laboratory staff did what lay in their power to aid the national cause in a time of grave pressure?

THE POTATO DISEASE CONFERENCE

ON June twenty-fifth to twenty-eighth the advisory board of American Plant Pathologists held a Potato Disease Conference on Long Island at which nearly one hundred persons chiefly interested in plant disease at

tended. Meetings were held at Riverhead and Watermill, Long Island and at the Hotel McAlpin, New York City.

Three automobile excursions were taken through the island. On Wedneslay, June 25, a tour was made of the north side where several most interesting field experiments were inspected. These experiments were conducted under the direction of representatives from the New York State College of Agriculture, the Suffolk County Farm Bureau, The Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, representatives from Canada and Bermuda, and the Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station.

On Thursday a trip was taken to the south side, where further experiments were inspected. During the afternoon, a meeting was held at Watermill, where addresses were made by Dr. A. D. Cotton, of the Board of Agriculture, England, who spoke on the development of plant pathology in England; by Dr. George H. Pethybridge, of the Board of Agriculture, Ireland, who gave a history of the phytopathological work in Ireland; by Dr. H. M. Quanjer, of the Pathological Laboratories, Wageningen, Holland, who gave a résumé of his researches on leaf-roll and mosaic of potato; and by Dr. H. A. Edson, of the Office of Cotton, Truck and Forage Crops Disease Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry, who read a paper by Schultz, Folson, Hildebrandt and Hawkins on "The Mosaic Disease of the Irish Potato."

On Friday, a tour of Nassau county was enjoyed by those attending the conference. Among the places of especial interest visited on this trip were the field laboratory of the New York State College of Agriculture, at Greenlawn, the Pratt Estate, at Glen Cove and Sagamore Hill, the home of the late Colonel Roosevelt. A special visit was also made to Colonel Roosevelt's grave.

On Saturday, about forty met at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a conference of the North East Pathologists on general plant diseases. At this meeting they were addressed by Dr. H. M. Quznjer, who gave an illustrated

lecture on potato leaf-roll. A short discussion was held upon some apple and tomato diseases.

The arrangements for this conference were in the hands of a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. M. F. Barrus, of Cornell University. The other members of the committee were: Messrs. H. H. Whetzel, of Cornell University; P. A. Murphy of Canada; E. J. Wortley, of Bermuda; W. A. Orton, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and C. R. Orton, of the Pennsylvania State College.

MR. CARNEGIE'S WILL

THE will of the late Andrew Carnegie was filed on August 28. A statement issued by Elihu Root, Jr., says:

Mr. Carnegie's gifts to charity during his lifetime totalled somewhat in excess of $350,000,000. The value of his estate is estimated at between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000. He really did divest himself of his great fortune for the benefit of mankind, as he long ago said that he would.

The will leaves the real estate and all the works of art and household goods to Mrs. Carnegie. Financial provision for Mrs. Carnegie and for Mrs. Carnegie's daughter, Mrs. Miller, was made during Mr. Carnegie's lifetime rather than by will.

The fourth article of the will contains a series of legacies, the most substantial of which are to charitable institutions. The fifth article of the will contains a series of annuities to relatives and friends. The Carnegie Corporation of New York is the residuary legatee, and Home Trust Company of New Jersey is the executor and trustee under the will.

The public bequests include: To the Cooper Union, $60,000; to the University of Pittsburgh, $200,000; to Hampton Institute, $300,000, and to Stevens Institute, $100,000.

The annuities include $10,000 to Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and $5,000 to Dr. Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Dr. W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS MAJOR LAWRENCE MARTIN, General Staff, U. S. Army, who is chief, Geographical Section, Military Intelligence, U. S. Army, left Paris on August 17 for Turkish Armenia, Russian Transcaucasia and Persia, as geographer to General Harbord's Mission to Armenia.

WITH the approval of President Wilson, Dr. Charles H. Herty has sailed for France to obtain for dye consumers of this country a six months' supply of such dyes as are now needed but have not yet been manufactured here. The dyes include the so-called vat colors," which are used chiefly by the manufacturers of wash goods. It is expected they will be shipped to this country within sixty days.

MAJOR F. E. BREITHUT, formerly of the Chemical Warfare Service Division of the United States Army, also assistant professor of chemistry at the College of the City of New York, has resigned to accept a position with The Foundation Oven Corporation.

MR. FREDERICK L. HOFFMAN, vice-president and statistician of the Prudential Insurance Company, has gone to England to make an intensive investigation into the effects of war on insurance, including the methods and results of national health insurance in Great Britain.

DR. ROLLIN T. CHAMBERLIN and Mr. Ben Herzberg are spending the summer in Alaska and northwestern Canada. The working season down to the early part of August was spent in special lines of investigation on particular phases of the mechanics of glacier movement in western Alaska and the remainder of the season down to the middle of September will be given to field work on the evidences of diastrophism in the northern Rockies.

PROFESSOR W. B. HERMS, associate professor of parasitology in the University of California, and a party of assistants, have completed a malaria-mosquito survey of California during the past summer and the former has resumed his university work. The survey was

begun early in 1916 and carried through the summer of 1917, but, owing to Professor Herms's absence while serving with the United States Army, the work was held in abeyance until the opening of this year. The greater part of the summer's work was carried on in the San Joaquin Valley, however, several weeks were spent in the mountainous countries of Alpine, Mono and Inyo and in portions of San Bernardino. The highest elevation reached was approximately ten thousand feet and the highest elevation at which Anopheline mosquitoes (Anopheles quadrimaculatus) were encountered at any time during the survey was 5,482 feet. A total of 18,088 miles were covered in the survey, all by automobile. A report of the survey in the northern third of the state has already been published (U. S. Public Health Report, July 18, 1919) and other reports will be issued in due time. The survey was conducted under the joint auspices of the California State Board of Health and the University of California.

DR. STUART WELLER, professor of paleontologic geology at the University of Chicago, succeeds the late Samuel Wendell Williston as director of the Walker Museum.

DURING summer quarter at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, Paul Beifold, professor of astronomy and director of Swasey Observatory, Denison University, acted as voluntary assistant; Francis P. Leavenworth, professor of astronomy and director of the observatory at the University of Minnesota, as visiting professor, and Clifford C. Crump, professor of astronomy and director of the Perkins Observatory, at Ohio Wesleyan University, as volunteer research assistant.

MR. JULIAN S. HUXLEY, a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1905 to 1909, and from 1913 to 1916 associate professor of biology in the Rice Institute, Houston, Texas, has been elected a fellow of New College.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

THE board of trustees of the University of Tennessee is planning to erect a building for

the medical department of the university at Memphis, to cost $100,000.

Ar the University of Arkansas Dr. John T. Buchholz, formerly of the West Texas Normal College, has been appointed head of the department of botany, and G. P. Stocker, formerly professor of civil engineering in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi, head of the department of civil engineering.

B. L. RICHARDS, Ph.D. (Wisconsin), has been appointed associate professor of botany at the Utah Agricultural College and Experiment Station.

MR. W. H. TIMBIE, author of books on electrical engineering and applied electricity, has been appointed associate professor of electrical engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DR. ALPHONSE RAYMOND DOCHEZ, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, has been appointed associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University.

PROFESSOR ANDREW HUNTER has been appointed to the chair of biochemistry in the University of Toronto, vacant through the resignation of Professor Brailsford Robertson.

DR. S. CHAPMAN, chief assistant at Greenwich Observatory, has been appointed professor of mathematics in the University of Manchester.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE DIRECT PHOTOGRAPHY OF COLONIES OF

BACTERIA

IN view of the desirability at times of obtaining photographic record of l'etri dishes which have been inoculated with bacteria and incubated, the following extremely simple and rapid method may prove useful.

The special value of this method from the pedagogical point of view is its simplicity, no camera, plates, or dark room being necessary. This makes it possible for all members of a class to preserve accurate and permanent records in comparing bacterial counts in samples of water or milk, to show form of growth on Petri dishes, to illustrate the

colonies arising from the tracks of flies walking across the gelatine, etc.

The method consists of placing the uncovered Petri dish against photographic paper in a dark corner of the laboratory, bringing forward into the light, and returning to a dark corner for development and fixing. I have had very good results by using Azo hard X exposed to a medium light for five seconds. Good results can also be obtained by using blue-print paper exposed to bright sunlight for forty-five seconds. This paper requires less care in handling in the light and only water for fixing but must be fastened to the Petri dish by spring clip or gummed label to prevent moving during the long exposure.

The result of this direct photography is a positive; that is the white bacterial colonies on the Petri dish appear white on the print; not black as they would on a negative. Careful comparison of the direct prints with ordinary photographs made from a negative shows no loss by the shorter method.

A. A. COPE

SHELL-SHOCK IN THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Herodotus, desrcibing the battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. (Book VI., section 117), says:

an

The following prodigy occurred there: Athenian, Epizelus, son of Cuphagoras, while fighting in the medley, and behaving valiantly, was deprived of sight, though wounded in no part of his body, nor struck from a distance; and he continued to be blind from that time for the remainder of his life. I have heard that he used to give the following account of his loss. He thought that a large heavy-armed man stood before him, whose beard shaded the whole of his shield; that this specter passed by him, and killed the man that stood by his side. Such is the account I have been informed Epizelus used to give. Is this, perchance, the first account of shell-shock"?

DEAN A. WORCESTER

THE AURORA of auguST 11 AT BURLINGTON, VERMONT

ON August 11, at approximately 10 P.M. (E'n "Summer" Time), the aurora borealis, as seen in Burlington, Vt., appeared as follows:

On a cloudless night with a nearly full moon, and east-west band of light, from horizon to horizon, increased in brightness as each end broadened northward. The zenith became brilliant violet, an inverted bowl of shifting color. Practically the whole sky was bright: and especially just above the northern horizon intensely white rays shot up toward the zenith. Near the violet center, pale pink and green occasionally showed. The lights lasted for several minutes, lingering longest near the northern skyline. JEAN DICKINSON

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER AURORA ABOUT SEPTEMBER 7-8, 1919?

THE intensity of the magnetic storm and the brilliance of the aurora of August 11-12 would indicate a disturbed region on the sun, the next presentation of which, opposite the earth about September 7-8, may produce another aurora. Such was the case April 4-6, 1918, following the brilliant aurora of March 7-8.

CHARLES F. BROOKS

QUOTATIONS

LABOR AND SCIENCE

ARE the great industrial countries moving in a vicious circle? The manifesto of the American Federation of Labor, which we publish [reprinted from SCIENCE] in another column, takes this view, and moreover, suggests a remedy. There is an "ever-increasing struggle of the workers to raise the standard of their living." Hitherto this has implied increased wages and shorter hours, or less production at higher cost. But now the "limit has been reached after which the average standard of living can not progress by the usual means of adjustment," by which are meant strikes, politicians' promises and public subsidies. If bankruptcy, moral and financial, is not to ensue, production, says the manifesto, must be increased by research and by the utilization in industry of the results of research. The vital necessity of scientific methods is clearly and cogently stated. In an age of steel and telegraphy, of aseptic surgery and of preventive medicine, of Mendelian breeding