installed and so strongly impressed by their scientific and educational value, that he at once expressed the wish that he might be permitted to assist the museum in its efforts to be of service to the public. After conference with Dr. Evermann, director of the museum, Captain Van Antwerp selected the Roosevelt elk group as the one that he would like to finance. This group is now being prepared under Dr. Evermann's supervision. Paul J. Fair is installing the group and Charles Bradford Hudson is painting the background. The animals will be shown at the edge of a heavy redwood forest such as is found in their natural habitat in the northwestern part of California. THE erection of a new building for the Department of Health in New York City has been made possible by an appropriation of $1,000,000 granted by the Board of Estimate. The new building will be erected on a plot of ground, 100 x 100 feet, on West Thirtieth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It will provide space for the offices of the director of the Bureau of Hospitals and for the director of the Bureau of Laboratories. Three or four floors will be given to the laboratories. The first floor will be for the Bureau of Records and another floor will be a modern health station where clinical work will be done. One floor will also be devoted to a medical library. THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the Reale Accademia delle Scienze of Turin, Italy, announces that the Vallauri prize of 26,000 lire, is to be awarded for the best work on any of the physical sciences that was published in the four years ending December 1, 1918. The prize is open to foreigners as well as to Italians. The works sent in to compete for the prize must reach the Academy Via Po 18, Turin, before December 31, 1919. A further prize of 1,200 lire is offered for the best manuscript or article published since January 1, 1915, on the etiology of endemic cretinism. WE learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that a new hygienic lab oratory provided with the most modern equipment has been recently inaugurated at Valparaiso, Chile, in connection with the hospital of San Juan de Dios. The laboratory comprises sections devoted among others to bacteriology, chemistry and serum manufacture. Ir is stated in Nature that the British Ministry of Ways and Communications Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons on July 10. Sir Eric Geddes, the minister-designate, announced the names of the prospective heads of departments as follows: Civil Engi neering: Sir Alexander Gibb, civil engineerin-chief, Admiralty, 1918. Mechanical Engi neering: Lieutenant-Colonel L. Simpson, R.E., chief mechanical engineer in charge of railway equipment and rolling-stock of the British Armies in France. Consultant Mechanical Engineer: Sir John Aspinwall, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Traffic Department: Sir Philip Nash. Finance and Statistics: Sir J. George Beharrell. Development Department: Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Martin de Bartolome. Public Safety and Labor: Sir William Marwood, joint permanent secretary of the Board of Trade. Roads Department: Brigadier-General Sir Henry P. Maybury. Secretarial and Legal: Sir R. Francis Dunnell. STEPS are being taken by the Commonwealth Advisory Council of (natural) Science and Industry of Australia to establish a forest products laboratory, at Perth, West Austrialia, for the purpose of experimenting in the utilization of the by-products of the timber mills and of the forests. With a view to securing all the information available at similar laboratories such as those at Madison, Wisconsin, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mr. I. H. Boas, M.Sc., lecturer in chemistry at the Perth Technical School, has been sent to the United States to conduct inquiries. THE board of overseers of Harvard University has recommended that the Harvard Botanical Garden should be combined with the Bussey Institution and moved to. the grounds of the latter at Jamaica Plains following a report to the board of overseers of the university by the committee visiting the Botanic Garden. The report is signed by Ernest B. Dane, of Boston, chairman of the committee; Oakes Ames, '98, director of the Botanic Garden; Edwin F. Atkins; George B. Dorr; Arthur F. Estabrook; W. Cameron Forbes; Richard M. Saltonstall; E. V. R. Thayer; Edwin S. Webster. The Botanic Garden is now situated at the corner of Garden and Linnean Streets and contains more than 5,000 species of flowering plants, which are cultivated for educational and scientific purposes. Dr. Asa Gray was its director from 1842 to 1872. THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the board of directors of the University of Cincinnati on September 9, is said to have rejected the appointments of the faculty of the industrial medicine and public health department made by Dr. Carey P. McCord. This department is not directly associated with the University of Cincinnati, although the board of directors is authorized to make appointments. The financing of the department is by subscription of business men of Cincinnati. THERE has been established at Paris an optical institute that will work in the interest of the manufacturers of opticians' supplies; it will not be conducted for commercial profit but solely for the purpose of advancing optical science and the optical industries for the common welfare. The forms of activity of this new scientific institute will be: (1) a training school of optics; (2) a laboratory of research and experiment, and (3) a professional school for advanced study. The school of optics will train experts in the manufacture of optical goods. M. C. Fabry, at present professor of general physics at the Faculté des sciences de Marseilles, has been selected as the head of the new institution. M. Lucien Poincaré, rector of the University of Paris, has evinced an especial interest in the institute and has expressed his intention of requesting a professional chair of optics at the Sorbonne. The laboratories will comprise a research department in which the instructors of the school may conduct their theoretical and practical researches with relation to the various kinds of glass, optical instruments and opticians' accessories, and a department for the study of manufactured products or any matters of importance submitted for examination by the institute. These laboratories will serve likewise for the training of students. The purpose of the professional school will be to train workers in glass, opticians and mechanicians who shall shall be preeminently qualified. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL, St. Louis, has received $300,000 to endow its department of pharmacology. Half of this sum was given by the General Education Board and the other half was raised by the medical school. MR. P. A. MOLTENO and his wife have offered the sum of £30,000 to the University of Cambridge, for the erection and maintenance of a suitable building, to be used as an institute for parasitological research in connection with the department of Professor G. H. F. Nuttall. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CHAMPION HERBERT MATHEWSON has been elected professor of metallurgy and metallography in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. DR. HARRY A. CURTIS has resigned his position at the Nitrogen Research Laboratory in order to accept a professorship in chemistry at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. ISRAEL S. KLEINER, Ph.D., formerly associate in physiology and pharmacology at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, has been appointed professor and head of the department of physiological chemistry at the New York Homœopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital, New York City. DR. J. G. FITZGERALD has been appointed professor of hygiene at the University of Toronto, to succeed Dr. John A. Amyst, who has been appointed deputy minister of health in the Federal Department of Health, Ottawa. DR. J. PROUDMAN has been appointed professor of applied mathematics in the University of Liverpool. It would seem from data obtained here that the definitions of active and inactive would need to be modified before this classification can have any meaning, since charcoal can be made which is the reverse of other charcoals in that it is relatively more active for hydrogen than for nitrogen as shown by the following data: Each of the volume measurements given were calculated from pressure readings and are reduced to normal pressure and temperature. The amount of charcoal used in each case was 25.7 gms. and this was left at liquid air temperature until saturated. The gases were used separately and not as mixtures. The difference in treatment of the last three samples was slight yet Sample 1 shows figures lying on the outside of those for Sample 2, i. e., the figures of Sample 1 have approached each other for Sample 2. Much more striking samples can no doubt be prepared. A report of this work will be published when completed but this will serve to point out an apparent incompleteness in the theory set forth by A. B. Lamb2 and by N. K. Chaney. 1 Not saturated in this particular case. 2 J. Ind. and Eng. Chem., 1919, 11, 420-467. The author is indebted to Dr. H. B. Lemon for valuable advice and assistance in this work. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO H. H. SHELDON AGED BEAN SEED, A CONTROL FOR DURING the progress of the investigational work on bacterial blight of beans (Bacterium phaseoli E. F. Sm.) at the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station many measures for control were attempted. The most successful method so far evolved is that of eliminating the disease by the use of aged seed. It was known that the causal bacteria could be cultivated from infected seed for only a limited time. With this fact in mind the infected seed raised in our experimental plots each year was saved and stored. Seed four and five years old has never produced blighted plants but the percentage of germination has been so low as to prohibit its use under actual farming conditions. Two- and three-year-old seed has with one exception given blight-free plants. This one exception occurred early in the work and in view of later results must be ascribed to accidental infection. Results secured indicate that the use of two- and three-year-old bean seed furnishes blight-free plants when planted upon uninfected land and at a sufficient distance from other bean patches to insure no accidental infection. Such seed moreover has a sufficiently high percentage of germination to make its use practical under actual farming conditions. The results of the investigational work which have been completed will be published in the near future. DEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTURE, A. & M. COLLEGE, STILLWATER, OKLAHOMA C. W. RAPP NOTE ON THE FLAGELLATION OF THE NODULE ORGANISMS OF THE LEGUMINOSÆ IN again taking up the question of flagellation of the nodule bacteria, the findings re ported in a previous paper1 are confirmed. Proven cultures from Vigna sinensis and Glycine hispida were repeatedly stained and examined, the organisms in every trial being found to have a single polar flagellum. Attention was then turned to the organisms, which had before given unsuccessful stains owing to the more abundant slime production. Pure cultures isolated from the nodules of Trifolium pratense, Vicia villosa, and Melilotus alba were tried, this time successfully, though the staining of these organisms is obviously more difficult and uncertain. The bacteria in every case were found to be peritrichous. It was further noted that whereas the organisms of Vigna and Glycine have a very stout flagellum, the flagella of the organisms from Vicia, Trifolium, and Melilotus are much finer. This confirms the work of De Rossi, Kellerman, Zipfel, and Prucha (but one convincing photomicrograph exists, that by De Rossi of Trifolum repens), and attention is called to the fact that these workers devoted their efforts to the more slimy group, i. e., Vicia, Trifolium, Pisum, Phaseolus, Medicago. It is now evident that on the basis of flagellation, the nodule bacteria are to be divided into two distinct groups; the Glycine-Vigna group, and the Trifolium-Vicia-Melilotus group. Further observations confirming this grouping and dealing with cultural and physiological characteristics as well as with the systematic position of these and related organisms, will be the subject of a paper entitled, The Nodule Bacteria of Leguminous Plants soon to be published by Lohnis and Hansen. ROY HANSEN ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION THE SUPPOSED SCALES OF THE COTTID FISH JORDANIA THE Cottidæ are in general scaleless, but the rare fish Jordania zonope Starks, from Puget Sound, is said to have the body above lateral line closely covered with ctenoid scales. Dr. D. S. Jordan has very kindly sent me fragments of one of the cotypes and 1 Ill. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bul. 202. the appearance is exactly as described. But when the material is treated with hot caustic potash, it is found that the apparent scales are nothing more than rows of strong ctenoid spines, placed as they would be in true scales. In the dorsal region the rows are curved as they would be were they margins of ctenoid scales. In the presumably related fossil Lepidocottus brevis (Agassiz), from the European Miocene, the ctenoid elements are as in Jordania, but the complete scales are present, with the circuli and basal radii as usual. It must be supposed that Jordania came from such an ancestor, and represents the survival of certain elements of scale structure without the scales, something like the grin of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat. T. D. A. COCKERELL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY ON THE PREPARATION OF A LIST RECOMMENDING CHEMICAL TEXTS FOR LIBRARIES ON January 15, 1919, announcement was made of the appointment of Messrs. W. A. Hamor, A. M. Patterson, and L. C. Newall, as a committee for the preparation of a text for the use of librarians, in recommending books for the chemical reading of the public, in accordance with the suggestion submitted to President Nichols by Mr. Joseph L. Wheeler, librarian of the Youngstown Public Library, Youngstown, Ohio. Following the presentation of its preliminary report1 at the Buffalo, N. Y., meeting of the society, the committee membership was strengthened by the addition of Mr. Wilhelm Segerblom. The study of the needs of librarians which was conducted by the committee at the inception of its work, made it clear that what was most desired was an authoritative series of reading courses, and not a mere book-list, on chemical subjects. In fact, Mr. Wheeler formally requested a mode of presentment consisting of running texts so prepared that the 1 See J. Am. Chem. Soc., 41, 95-96 of Proceedings. "prospect " would become interested in the chemical subjects discussed; and consideration of this view and the results of its own inquiry convinced the committee that, to accomplish the purposes desired, the reading courses should have a very definite publicity plan behind them. In carrying out its work, the committee has prepared the manuscripts for a series of circulars which, it is thought, will make men want to read chemical literature. In order to accomplish that result, the committee has written lively and appealing essays, of about 1,500 words each, on elementary chemistry, household chemistry, general and physical chemistry, inorganic and analytical chemistry, organic and biological chemistry, industrial inorganic chemistry, industrial organic chemistry, and techno-chemical analysis, all of which have been divided into appropriate paragraphs, worded so as to bring out the importance of the subject and so as to impress the reader with the national essentiality of the chemical profession. Carefully selected books are mentioned casually in the texts of the courses, usually to conclude the paragraphs. These courses should now be made available for the use of librarians who wish to reach ambitious persons who have the intelligence to follow a course of chemical study. They should, to serve the intended purpose, be published in attractive booklet form for distribution at libraries to persons who are engaged in chemical work or interested in the specific subjects of the various courses, and to persons who are as yet only casually engaged or interested, but who may think of becoming wellinformed on chemical subjects. It is therefore recommended that the committee be authorized to furnish Mr. Joseph L. Wheeler with copies of the manuscripts, in order that he may endeavor to arrange for their publication in toto, and that the present committee be designated to cooperate.with Mr. Wheeler in that undertaking and in stimulating interest in chemistry through the media of libraries. It is also recommended that the courses be published by the society in The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. The committee is grateful for the privilege of rendering this public service, for, as in Carlyle's time, "the true university is a collection of books," expertly selected and properly used. MELLON INSTITUTE, PITTSBURGH, Pa., August 29, 1919. soon W. A. HAMOR SPECIAL ARTICLES AN UNEXCELLED MEDIUM FOR THE ONE can not contemplate the history of human dissection without a profound sense of gratitude for the discovery of three chemicals, the use of which in embalming has completely transformed the laboratory of gross anatomy. Could they have been introduced earlier, human dissection long since would have lost its forbidding aspect. Although Scheele discovered glycerin in 1779, it was not used for the preservation of anatomical material until 1868, almost a century later. This was not until a year after formaldehyde had been discovered by Hoffman and, although the antiseptic properties of the latter were not revealed till twenty years later. this event was followed by its introduction into histologic and gross anatomic technique in 1890 by Blum, junior and senior respectively. The earlier discovery of phenol by Runge in 1834, with the subsequent relation of its antiseptic properties by the revolutionary usage of it in surgery by Lister in 1867, and its application in the preservation of anatomic material by Laskowski in the same year, or even in 1864, completes the trinity of substances so largely responsible for freeing dissection of the human body from the noisome burden previously imposed by post mortem decay. An occasionally delayed necropsy still can suggest to present-day medical students just what this freedom meant to anatomists and students of anatomy of the past. Surely nothing has been a greater boon to human anatomy and anatomists than the miracle wrought by these and other chemicals, the proper use of which bids fair to make our anatomical laboratories practically odorless. |