of physiological chemistry, University of Pennsylvania; and A. F. Woods, botanist, president of Maryland State College of Agriculture.

This committee will devote its attention and activities to the solution of important problems connected with the nutritional values and most effective grouping and preparation of foods, both for human and animal use. Special attention will be given to national food conditions and to comprehensive problems involving the coordinated services of numerous investigators and laboratories. The committee, with the support of the council, is arranging to obtain funds for the support of its researches, and will get under way, just as soon as possible, certain specific investigations already formulated by individual committee members and sub-committees. These include studies of the comparative food values of meat and milk and of the conditions of production of these foods in the United States, together with the whole problem of animal nutrition; the food conditions in hospitals, asylums and similar institutions; the nutritional standards of infancy and adolescence; the formation of a national institute of nutrition; and other problems of similarly large and nationally important character.

THE ELIZABETH THOMPSON SCIENCE FUND AT a meeting of the trustees of the Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund, held on Thursday, November 20, the following grants were voted: two hundred and fifty dollars to Professor Duncan S. Johnson, of Johns Hopkins University, for studies on the Development, Persistence and Growth of the Cactaceae and Certain Myrtacæ; two hundred dollars to Professor Antonio Pensa, of the University of Sassari, Italy, for investigations on the Cytology of Vegetable Cells; and three hundred dollars to Professor Lawrence J. Henderson, of Harvard University, for a research on the Heats of Reaction of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide with Hæmoglobin solutions.

The Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund has been serviceable for many years in giving aid, by small grants, to research which otherwise might not be readily undertaken. The grants

are made only for scientific investigations and must be applied to actual expenses of the research, i. e., they are not made to support an investigator or to meet the ordinary expenses of publication. The trustees give preference to researches involving international cooperation. The grants are not made for researches of narrow or merely local interest, nor are they available for equipment of private laboratories or for purchase of apparatus ordinarily to be found in scientific institutions. Applications for grants from this fund should be made before January 15, 1920, to Professor W. B. Cannon, secretary of the trustees of the fund, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

ENDOWMENT OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

ANNOUNCEMENT is made that the General Education Board of New York, has appropriated the sum of $4,000,000 for the purpose of enabling the Vanderbilt University to effect an entire reorganization of its medical school, in accordance with the most exacting demands of modern medical education.

The faculty of the medical school has for some years been urging upon the trustees of the university the necessity of radical and thoroughgoing organization, and it is promised its hearty and unconditional cooperation in the establishing of a new school of medicine in Nashville, as an integral department of Vanderbilt University.

Detailed plans for the new school have not as yet been developed, but they will unquestionably involve the completion of the present Galloway Memorial Hospital, with enlarged faculties for public patients, the erection in the near future of an additional hospital unit, the organization of a modern laboratory building, and the appointment of an increased number of professors, giving their entire time to the school and hospital, in both laboratory and clinical branches. Thus, not only will the endowment of the medical school be very greatly increased, but it will start its career with a modern and up-to-date plant-laboratory as well as hospital.

It is stated that this contribution by the

general education board comes from the general funds of the board, and not out of Mr. Rockefeller's recent donation of $20,000,000 for the promotion of medical education in the United States. The gift was in fact determined on before Mr. Rockefeller's recent gift was known.

THE ST. LOUIS MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT

OF SCIENCE

THE opening general session of the association will be held on Monday night, December 29, at 8 P.M. in the Assembly Room of the Soldan High School. Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, will preside. General announcements concerning the meeting will be made, the revised constitution of the association will be presented for vote and the retiring president, Professor John Merle Coulter, of the University of Chicago, will deliver his address on "The Evolution of Botanical Science." The meeting will be followed by an informal reception to members of the American Association and of affiliated societies.

Registration headquarters, permanent and assistant secretaries' offices, meetings of the council, and all sessions of the association and the affiliated societies will be held in the Soldan High School. A directory will be conveniently placed in the main lobby and each room will be placarded indicating the various sessions.

There will be an information booth in Union station, where directions will be given for reaching hotels and meeting place. An attendant will be at booth at the time of arrival of all important trains on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, December 28, 29 and 30. Hotel Statler will be the general headquarters. The local executive committee consists of George T. Moore, Alexander S. Langsdorf, Augustus G. Pohlman, John W. Withers and John M. Wulfing.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

THE Royal Society has awarded its medals as follows: Royal medals to Professor J. B. Farmer for his work on plant and animal

cytology, and to Mr. J. H. Jeans for his researches in applied mathematics; the Copley medal to Professor W. M. Bayliss for his contributions to general physiology and to biophysics; the Davy medal to Professor P. F. Frankland for his work in chemistry, especially that on optical activity and on fermentation; the Sylvester medal to Major P. A. MacMahon for his researches in pure mathematics, especially in connection with the partition of numbers and analysis; and the Hughes medal to Dr. C. Chree for his researches on terrestrial magnetism.

DR. CHARLES D. WALCOTT, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has been elected an associate member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.

HONORARY membership diplomas and medals have been conferred by the Antwerp Zoological Society upon Professor Henry F. Osborn, president of the New York Zoological Society, and Dr. William T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Garden, in testimony of its gratitude for a gift of animals sent to the Antwerp Garden.

DR. RAYMOND PEARL, professor of biometry and vital statistics in the School of Hygiene and Public Health of the Johns Hopkins University has been appointed statistician to the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

DR. WALTER VAN DYKE BINGHAM, director of the division of applied psychology of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, has been elected first chairman of the division of anthropology and psychology of the National Council of Research, and has been granted half-time leave until July 1, 1920.

DR. PAUL G. WOOLEY, professor of pathology in the college of medicine of the University of Cincinnati, has resigned.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL COERT DuBois, district forester at San Francisco, California, has resigned from the U. S. Forest Service and entered the Consular Service. Colonel DuBois has been a member of the Forest Service since 1900.

ELLSWORTH Y. DOUGHERTY has been appointed mining geologist in southern Oregon

for the Oregon Bureau of Mines and Geology.

DR. A. R. DAVIS, assistant professor of plant pathology and physiology, University of Nebraska, has accepted a position in the division of soil chemistry and bacteriology, University of California. Captain Davis has recently returned from France where he saw service with the heavy artillery.

IT has been stated in SCIENCE that G. B. Richardson has been placed in direct charge of the oil and gas section of the U. S. Geological Survey. Mr. Richardson has been placed in charge of the oil and gas section of the Division of Mineral Resources of the U. S. Geological Survey. Mr. David White remains at the head of the oil and gas section of the Division of Geology.

THE Observatory of Leiden is being enlarged and reorganized according to plans submitted by the new director, Professor W. de Sitter. It will henceforth consist of three departments Fundamental Astronomy, Astrophysics and Theoretical Astronomy-with subdirectors in charge of the first two. Professor E. Hertzsprung has been appointed sub-director of the Astrophysical Department.

PROFESSOR ROBERT K. NABOURS, of the zoology department, Kansas State Agricultural College, has been given a year's leave of absence to make a third trip to Turkestan in the interest of the Karakul fur industry. During his absence Dr. James E. Ackert will be acting head of the department.

DR. EDWARD C. SCHNEIDER, formerly major in the Sanitary Corps, and now head professor of biology at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., has been asked to continue as physiologist in charge of the physiological department of the medical research laboratory in the Air Service of the Army, at Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, L. I. He is giving two days of each week to this work.

DR. LOUIS A. BAUER gave an illustrated lecture on the "Solar Eclipse of May 29, 1919, and the Einstein Effect," before the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada at the University of Toronto, on December 2, and at the College of the City of New York on Decem

ber 4, at noon. The lantern slides showed views of the solar eclipse and of various expeditions of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and of the astronomical expeditions sent out by the Smithsonian Expedition, Great Britain and Brazil, covering the belt of totality from Bolivia to the French Congo.

A HARVEY SOCIETY lecture will be given by Dr. E. C. Kendall, of the Mayo clinic, on "The chemistry of the thyroid secretion" at the New York Academy of Medicine on the evening of December 13.

DR. G. M. STRATTON, professor of psychology in the University of California, has accepted an invitation to deliver the Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures at the Yale School of Religion, beginning April 12, 1920.

THE Lane medical lectures to be given by Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor, professor of physiological chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, will have at their subject 66 The Feeding of the Nations at War.” The titles of the lectures are:

December 8, "The problem of feeding a nation.'

December 9, "The feeding of the United Kingdom."'

December 10, "The feeding of France and Italy."

December 11, "The feeding of the enemy states.''

December 12, "The food problem of Europe after the war. ""

THE executive committee of the Federation of Biological Societies, which includes the American Physiological Society, has called the annual meeting at Toronto, Canada, December 29, 30 and 31, 1919. The meeting is at the invitation of the University of Toronto. This is the thirty-second annual meeting of the American Physiological Society and it is hoped that this first post-war gathering may be made an epoch meeting. The meeting places of all the societies and the general offices of the federation will be in the medical building of the University of Toronto. Accommodations for approximately 200 members can be obtained by the local committee in the residences of the university and its colleges.

THE Division of Industrial Research of the National Research Council is arranging for the formation of a cooperative association to plan and support fundamental researches in alloys. Although much valuable work has been done in this field by scattered investigators there is no doubt that a well-planned and coordinated effort by a cooperative association working under the general guidance of the National Research Council and composed of specialists representing both the manufacturers and the more extensive users of alloys can produce additional results of great importance. The success of other industries which have supported research on a cooperative plan, such as has been done by the National Canners' Association and the Malleable Iron Manufacturers, is evidence of this. It is planned to create a special scientific staff composed of a director and assistant director of research and a group of scientific investigators and technical experts who shall give their whole time to the work. To finance the organization each member of the cooperative association will pay $1,000 a year, and all contributing members, who may be either alloy manufacturing or using individuals, firms or companies are to benefit alike by the results of the researches.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

MCCOY HALL and others of the old buildings of the Johns Hopkins University were destroyed by fire on the night of November 27. The loss is covered by insurance, but valuable libraries and records of the school of hygiene and public health, which occupied the second floor of McCoy Hall, were destroyed with irreparable loss.

THE main buildings of the University of Montreal, known as Laval University, containing the medical department, were destroyed by fire on November 22. The loss is estimated at $400,000, which is covered by insurance.

By an intensive campaign lasting less than a week the University of Rochester has raised $800,000 in the city of Rochester alone toward

an endowment fund of one million dollars, the interest from which is to be used to increase professors' salaries. Mr. George Eastman, head of the Eastman Kodak Company, subscribed $100,000, the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company gave $75,000 and many other houses sums of lesser amount.

DR. E. H. KENNARD has been appointed assistant professor of physics at Cornell University.

CAPTAIN ESBON Y. TITUS, formerly chief chemist for Nitrate Plant No. 1, Sheffield, Ala., has been appointed assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin.

FRANCIS MARSH BALDWIN, Ph.D. (Illinois), assistant professor of zoology at Iowa State College for the past two years, has been raised to the rank of associate professor and has charge of the work in human physiology. Ralph L. Parker, M.S. (Brown), who served overseas for eleven months, is associated with Dr. Baldwin as an instructor.

STUART HOBBS SIMS, associate professor in the department of mechanics and hydraulics at the University of Iowa, will succeed C. B. McCullough as head of the department of civil engineering at the Oregon Agricultural College. Mr. McCullough has been appointed state highway bridge engineer for Oregon.

THE Yale School of Forestry has received. from Mrs. Claire K. Williams, of Lakeville, Conn., her interest in a pension fund of ten thousand dollars. This fund is given as a memorial to her son, Herbert C. Williams, who graduated at the School of Forestry as a loan for needy students.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

AN APPEAL

DURING the night of November 27 fire completely destroyed McCoy Hall, formerly the administration building of the Johns Hopkins University, and immediately occupied by the Federated Charity Organization of the City of Baltimore, and certain departments of the

school of hygiene and public health of Johns Hopkins University. About three weeks ago the writer moved his department, that of biometry and vital statistics in the school of hygiene, into McCoy Hall, occupying the whole of the second floor of that building. On Thanksgiving Eve the writer had completed the removal to this building of all his private scientific library comprising roughly some fifteen thousand reprints and pamphlets. In the fields of biometry and genetics this library was in some respects unique owing to the fact that the writer began his activities in the field of biometry nearly twenty years ago when that branch of biological science was just getting under way, and consequently there was a completeness to the collection in that field which makes its total loss a catastrophe of overwhelming significance to the writer's scientific work.

In addition all the accumulated unpublished records of the writer's work for the past twenty years were completely destroyed. This included the records of his work in the genetics of poultry for ten years at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station.

This second loss is, of course, wholly irremediable. The purpose of this note is to appeal to workers in the fields of genetics, biometry and vital statistics, to help in remedying the first loss in so far as it can be remedied by sending to the writer duplicates of such of their reprints as they may have available and which they were kind enough to send him before. Any help in this direction will be deeply appreciated. RAYMOND PEARL SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND PUBLIC HEALTH, THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

SOMATIC VARIATION

THE undersigned are making a study of somatic variation, using for this purpose the duplicated portions of double monsters. We are especially interested at the present time in securing photographs or accurate sketches showing the color markings on double-headed calves or other double monsters in mammals characterized by color patterns. Any information as to the existence of such specimens

from which records of this nature might be obtained would be greatly appreciated.

LEON J. COLE, JESSIE MEGEATH

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

STEINDACHNERIDION

IN 18881 we created the genus Steindachneria for three species of large catfishes from eastern Brazil; St. amblyura E. and E., from the Rio Jequitinhonha, St. doceana E. and E., from the Rio Doce and St. parahyba Steindachner, from the Rio Parahyba. Our attention was at once called to the fact that Goode, in Agassiz' "Three Cruises of the Blake," had mentioned with a brief description and no type, if we recall correctly, a Macrurid under the name Steindachneria. With the rules governing nomenclature in those benighted times Goode's name had no standing and we wrote Goode calling his attention to the fact. Goode replied October 1, 1888: "Steindachneria has never been published, though the diagnosis of the genus has been lying in manuscript for nearly two years. So we will change the name. It is not of the least consequence."

When Goode and Bean's "Oceanic Ichthyology" was issued it appeared that Goode's intentions in regard to the Macrurid Steindachneria had not been carried out. There upon2 we proposed the name Steindachnerella for the Macrurid.

Times and rules have changed. Dr. David Starr Jordan recently wrote us the catfish must have a new name. We sent him the letter of G. Brown Goode whereupon Jordan replies, "Goode's letter is very nice and characteristic. But under our present rules a nomen seminudus holds. I recommend that you give a new name to the South American genus."

Reluctantly and with effort we submit to changing opinion, realizing that it is a long time since we began to give names to the fresh water fishes of South America. There

1 Proc. Cal. Acad. Sci. (2), I., 137. 2 Am. Naturalist, 1897, p. 159.