DR. H. S. WASHINGTON, of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, has been appointed chemical associate to the scientific attachés at the American embassies in Paris and Rome.

PROFESSOR GRAHAM LUSK, of Cornell Medical College, and one of the representatives at the recent meetings of the "Interallied Scientific Food Commission" abroad, will give at the New York Academy of Medicine on Thursday evening, October 3, at nine o'clock, the Wesley M. Carpenter lecture on "The scientific aspect of the interallied food situation."

DR. WILLIAM P. HARLOW, head of the school of medicine of the University of Colorado, has been appointed a major in the Medical Corps, and has been placed in charge of General Hospital No. 21.

DR. H. L. HOLLINGWORTH, associate professor of psychology in Barnard College, Columbia University, has been commissioned a captain in the Sanitary Corps, and will report at the Plattsburg Barracks.

RHYS D. EVANS, associate professor of physics in Bowdoin College, formerly instructor in physics, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, the son of Professor D. J. Evans, of the latter institution, has been commissioned captain in the Chemical Warfare Service.

DR. W. E. CARROLL, professor of animal husbandry at the Utah Agricultural College, has been commissioned as captain in the Sanitary Corps of the United States Army, and will report to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for special training at the medical officers' training camp.

DR. W. L. ARGO, formerly of the University of California, has been commissioned a lieutenant in the Chemical Warfare Service and has been sent to France.

DR. W. J. ROBBINS, formerly professor of botany at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, has been appointed a lieutenant, Sanitary Corps, and is stationed at Yale University.

JOHN PAUL GIVLER, of the department of zoology, University of Tennessee, has been appointed first lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps.

DR. FRANK C. GATES, professor of biology at Carthage College, Carthage, Ill., has been commissioned second lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps and reported at Yale University on September 9.

LIEUTENANT CHARLES A. WATERS, who recently returned to this country after fourteen months' service with the Johns Hopkins Base Hospital in France, will leave shortly for Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., where he will be an instructor in the roentgen-ray division of that cantonment. He expects to return to France later.

O. L. THOMAS has been transferred from the Experimental Station of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Wilmington, Del., where he acted as research chemist, to the U. S. Government Powder Plant at Jacksonville, Tenn., where he will be chief supervisor of caustic soda manufacture and soda ash recovery.

THE Mary Kingsley medal of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for research in tropical diseases has been awarded to Dr. Griffith Evans, the discoverer of the trypanosome of Surra, a disease of horses and camels of India, Burma, and the east.

DR. CAROLINE S. FINLEY, Dr. Anna I. Von Sholly and Dr. Mary Lee Edward, of New York, who are connected with the Women's Overseas Hospitals, have been decorated by the French government and commissioned lieutenants in the Medical Corps of the French Army, the commissions having been bestowed for excellent surgical work and treatment of the wounded under heavy bombardment in a hospital at the French front.

R. G. WEBBER, assistant professor of physics, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, who has been in the service of the government during the summer at the Watertown Arsenal, has had his leave of absence extended through the coming college year to continue his work in the physical testing department of the arsenal.

PROFESSOR C. H. GORDON, Ph.D., professor of geology and mineralogy, University of Tennessee, has returned after an absence of two weeks in lecturing at army camps under the auspices of the Army Y. M. C. A. The

first week was spent at Camp Hancock, Augusta, Ga., and the second at Camp Sevier, Greenville, S. C. The plan of giving lectures in the camps on geographical and travel subjects was undertaken at the instance of the committee on geology and geography of the National Research Council, of which Professor W. M. Davis, of Harvard University, is chair

man.

DR. D. S. JENINGS has been appointed to the staff of the Experiment Station of the Utah Agricultural College as expert in charge of an extensive soil survey to be made of the state of Utah. This survey will be conducted in consultation with the station departments of agronomy, geology, horticulture, irrigation and drainage, botany, chemistry and bacteriology, and farm management.

PROFESSOR A. S. HITCHCOCK, Bureau of Plant Industry, spent the month of August studying and collecting grasses in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado.

DR. IRA E. LEE, instructor of chemistry at the University of Rochester, has become a research chemist with E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del.

DR. ALFRED R. SCHULTZ has presented his resignation from the U. S. Geological Survey, to become manager of a hydro-electric power and milling company.

MR. JOHN A. COYE has resigned his position as chief chemist with the Engineering Experiment Station of the Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa, to accept the position of assistant chemist with the General Chemical Company at their Laurel Hill Works.

PROFESSOR JOJI SAKURAI, who has arrived in London from Japan, has brought with him a contribution from Japan to the Ramsay Memorial Fund, amounting to £487 9s. 2d., which he has handed over to the honorable treasurers, Lord Glenconner and Professor Collie.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE movement for reform in the management of the universities in Argentina for

which the professors and students of the universities have been keeping up an agitation, has culminated in a bill presented by the president of the republic to congress for deliberation and action. The bill coincides in general with the demands of those contending for reforms. It provides that the dean shall be elected by the professors, he shall serve four years and can not succeed himself. The election will be by a council of seven members, one representing the students, one the alumni and the others the professors.

AT Harvard University, Dr. Wallace Clement Sabine has been appointed acting director of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory, and Dr. Herbert Sidney Langfield, acting director of the Psychological Laboratory.

PROFESSOR LOUIS DE L. HARWOOD, Montreal, has been appointed dean of the medical department of Laval University.

F. C. WERKENTHIN, assistant professor of biology in New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, has been elected to the associate professorship of botany in New Hampshire Agricultural College and will assume his new duties with the opening of college in September.

AT Cornell University Dr. R. C. Gibbs has been promoted to be professor of physics; Dr. H. E. Howe, formerly professor of physics at Randolph-Macon College, has been appointed assistant professor.

DR. H. L. WALSTER, of the college of agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, has returned to his position as associate professor of soils in the university after having spent a year's leave of absence at the University of Chicago, where he received the Ph.D. degree in plant physiology and plant ecology.

THE following changes in the faculty of the department of agriculture in the University of Minnesota have been made recently: H. H. Kildee has resigned as chief of the dairy husbandry division in order to take charge of animal husbandry work at Iowa State College,

and has been succeeded by C. H. Eckles, formerly of the University of Missouri; J. S. Montgomery and T. G. Paterson have resigned as associate professors of animal husbandry, and R. C. Ashby as assistant professor of animal husbandry, to enter commercial work; W. H. Peters, formerly head of animal husbandry of the North Dakota Experiment Station, has been appointed professor of animal husbandry; P. A. Anderson has been promoted from instructor to assistant professor of animal husbandry; J. C. Cort, formerly of Iowa State College, has been appointed assistant professor of dairying.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE RED RAYS AND PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT

I WISH to call attention to an error which should be corrected as it is being repeated and found its way into such standard texts as Hughe's "Photoelectricity" (Cambridge University Press). Red light does not give a photoelectric effect with phosphorescent calcium sulphide, as the effect stops at the wavelength of about 4,200 Ångström, as was shown by the writer.1 This result was later confirmed at the University of Berlin. The result is of considerable theoretical importance because the theory of the photoelectric effect which takes into account the necessity of a critical energy content before the electrons can be shot off, shows that there will be a wavelength for each element beyond which no photoelectric effect will be produced. The element which gives the photoelectric effect in phosphorescent calcium sulphide is not known, but has been supposed by the writer to be sulphur as it is photoelectric for ultra-violet light and it was shown experimentally to give a photoelectric effect for wave-lengths longer than 3,200 Ångström. This hypothesis could be established by showing that the photoelectric effect of sulphur ended at the same point as was shown for phosphorescent calcium sulphide.

When the writer began an investigation of the photoelectric effect of phosphorescent ma1The Photoelectric Effect of Phosphorescent Material," American Journal of Science, 1912.

terial in 1910 at Yale University, it was supposed that the result obtained in 1909 by Lenard and Saeland at the University of Heidelberg was correct. However, it was found that the photoelectric effect of phosphorescent calcium stopped at about 4,200 Ång., which is a shorter wave-length than red light. Thus the result of Lenard and Saeland is incorrect.

The error arose from confusing the effect of red light on the conductivity, which did exist, with that of the photoelectric effect which did not exist. In their paper in the Annalen der Physik, Lenard and Saeland described what they thought to be a new effect with red light which was called "Aktinodielektrische Wirkung." This effect differed from the photoelectric effect in that the test plate instead of charging up only positively, charged up both positively and negatively. It was thought that the long heat or red waves being more nearly comparable with the dimensions of the molecules affected them beyond the point where the photoelectric effect stopped. However, after working about a year on the effect of red rays on phosphorescent calcium sulphide, the writer came to the conclusion that no photoelectric effect could be obtained with red light and that the actinodielectric effect was nothing more than an increase in conductivity such as had previously been known to exist for selenium.

After the foregoing conclusion was reached a reexamination of the original article of Lenard and Saeland showed that on account of a faulty construction of their apparatus the plate on which the material was placed was not completely insulated from the accelerating and retarding fields, as is necessary when the photoelectric effect only is to be obtained.

In order to confirm the conclusion, my own apparatus was later reconstructed at the Massachusetts Agricultural College so as to obtain both effects separately at will. It was shown with this apparatus that sulphur was both photoelectric and actinodielectric. photoelectric effect required a high vacuum, but the actinodielectric effect worked in addition at atmospheric pressure, the direction of the current depending upon the direction of the applied field.

The conductivity of phosphorescent calcium sulphide was later separately investigated at the University of Heidelberg, and it was shown that certain wave-lengths not in the infra-red gave a maximum effect, which was contrary to what one might have expected from Lenard's theory. Rather the effect was a maximum near the point where the photoelectric effect stopped, suggesting some relation between the photoelectric and actinodielectric effect. An investigation of the relation between these two effects (which amounts to finding out the relation between the ease with which the electrons are ejected and the increase in conductivity for different wavelengths of light) was started for sulphur, during the summer of 1913, by the writer at the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory of the Royal Institution, London, England, but was not finished.

The relation between the photoelectric effect, actinodielectric effect and phosphorescence has been discussed by the writer and a general theory of phosphorescence has been developed which includes fluorescence, fluorescent Xrays, organic phosphorescence and self-luminous radioactive substances. In the review of this theory in the "Beiblatter zu den Annalen der Physik" the difference between Lenard's theory of phosphorescence and the author's is not clearly pointed out. The author's theory takes into account resonance, Stokes's law and a critical energy content, which is not done by Lenard.

In conclusion, in respect to phosphorescent calcium sulphide, it should be said that red light does increase its conductivity, but does not give a photoelectric effect.

CHESTER ARTHUR BUTMAN

SPECIAL GROWTH-PROMOTING SUBSTANCES

AND CORRELATION

THE vigor of potato sprouts bears a direct relation to the size of the seed piece, or in other words to the amount of tissue surrounding the eye. When a certain minimum is reached, the vigor of the sprouts decreases as the size of

2 See The Electron Theory of Phosphorescence," Physical Review, 1912.

the seed piece is reduced. The weak, slender sprouts produce correspondingly weak plants which remain weak during their entire period of growth and yield a small crop of tubers.

The weak sprouts are not due to lack of usual food materials, as sprouts on pieces still large enough to contain an abundance of these substances, show considerable decrease in vigor. If a lack of sufficient ash constituents is responsible for the weak sprouts, they might be expected to approach their usual vigor if the small pieces be allowed to sprout in rich soil, as the sprouts form roots very quickly in moist soil. The sprouts from such pieces, however, do not gain any vigor under these conditions.

It seems logical to conclude that the potato tuber contains a limited amount of a special growth-promoting substance and if the amount of tissue surrounding the growing bud is too small, there is not enough of this substance available for normal growth.

Some of the experimental data is included in Bulletin No. 212 of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station under the following title: "Physiological Basis for the Preparation of Potatoes for Seed." While this bulletin was in press an article appeared by Loeb, in which he states that equal masses of sister leaves of Bryophyllum calycium produce approximately equal masses of shoots in equal time and under equal conditions, even if the number of the shoots varies considerably. He concludes that the limited amount of material available for growth and the automatic attraction of the material by the buds which grow out first, explain the inhibiting effect of these buds on the growth of the other buds.

If the correlative inhibition of bud growth on the potato tuber has a chemical basis it does not appear to be identical with the growthpromoting substance which the writer has postulated and which seem to effect the growth of sprouts only after they have started. Several facts in connection with the growth of sprouts on potato tubers could be mentioned to substantiate this conclusion but the two following experiments seem sufficient.

If a potato tuber bearing vigorous sprouts on the terminal end is cut transversely into

This

halves, sprouts will appear on the basal half. Therefore, this half still contained sufficient growth material to produce sprouts. proves that, although the basal buds would not grow out before their connection with the terminal end of the tuber was severed, they were not prevented from doing so because the terminal sprouts had automatically attracted the limited amount of material for growth.

If a tuber, before the end of the rest period, is cut into transverse slices the buds on the basal slices will grow out first. If the tuber is cut lengthwise into fractions the growth of basal buds is entirely suppressed. The terminal buds on these fractions do not produce sprouts until the end of the natural rest period for whole tubers, which in some cases is a month after the basal buds on the transverse slices have grown out. The basal buds seem to have a shorter rest period than the terminal ones but are unable to grow out until their connection with the terminal end of the tuber is severed. This experiment shows that the terminal end of the tuber, even before its buds have grown out, may inhibit the growth of buds more basally situated.

Potatoes are sometimes affected with a physiological disease called "Spindling Sprout," because the whole tubers produce long, slender, weak sprouts. In all probability the special growth-promoting substances are abnormally low in these tubers. In this connection, however, the most interesting symptom of the disease is a lack of any inhibiting effect of the terminal buds on the other buds, as the sprouts appear, as a rule, simultaneously over the entire tuber. The behavior of the Bryophyllum plants reported on by Braum1 may have been due to a condition of the particular plants analogous to the "Spindling Sprout" of the potato. If this were true it would account for the instances of regeneration of Bryophyllum leaves seemingly at variance with the experiments described by Loeb.2

CHARLES O. APPLEMAN MARYLAND AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STA., COLLEGE PARK

1 Braun, Lucy E., Bot. Gaz., 65, 191-193, 1918. 2 Loeb, J., Bot. Gaz., 65, 150-174, 1918.

QUOTATIONS

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN GREAT
BRITAIN AND THE WAR

THE effect of the war upon the number of medical students in their different years of professional study has been described from time to time by the president of the General Medical Council. Between the years 1910 and 1914 the annual entry of first-year medical students averaged roughly 1,440. Since the war the number of these entries has increased by five or six hundred a year. Thus the whole number of students actually pursuing medical studies in the medical schools of the United Kingdom has shown a steady upward movement. In May, 1916, the total was 6,103, in January, 1917, it was 6,682, in October, 1917, it was 7,048, while the latest figure, for May, 1918, was 7,630. But for some time the larger withdrawals of male students from the medical schools for combatant service or for service as surgeon probationers in the navy, more than nullified the increased entries and bade fair to produce a serious deficiency of new practitioners in the years 1918 and 1919. Urgent representations upon this matter were made to the government. As a result something has been done to make good the threatened shortage by the return of third-year students from active service to complete their studies, by the retention in the medical schools of students on their way towards qualification who are liable to be called to the colors, and by limiting the period of service of surgeon probationers. The Minister of National Service has further undertaken to provide that, if possible, the supply of students in training shall be kept at a level sufficient to give an annual yield of at least 1,000 new practitioners. This is the official estimate, but it will be well to remember that though there has been heavy wastage among medical men through the hazards and hardships of war the declaration of peace will be followed by the release from military duty of the majority of the medical men now serving in the army and navy. Demobilization is a matter which effects the medical profession at least as much as other sections of the community. The method in