allow the use of that system merely as optical. Any uniform system of classifying merchandise, however, will require on the part of the United States thoroughgoing and complete adherence to the metric system.

Of more importance than statistical and administrative questions is the use of the metric system in trade. Now that the United States is obviously being drawn into closer and more vital commercial relations by the rest of the world, and particularly with Latin-America, our manufacturers and exporters will be obliged to meet the demands of their prospective customers in a somewhat more accommodating frame of mind than hitherto. Only the English-speaking nations still have to adopt the metric system of weights and measures, and among them the British Empire, or at least Great Britain, seems to be giving serious consideration to the necessity of making a change. Those who read the Commerce Reports of the United States Department of Commerce know how numerous are the opportunities necessarily allowed to pass by because of our inability to supply goods and machinery constructed in accordance with the metric system. The subject has now assumed a most practical character in the minds of those who are planning for post-war trade expansion.

The resolution adopted by the commission is as follows:

The United States section of the International High Commission, having in view the present efforts to bring about the exclusive use of the metric system of weights and measures within the jurisdiction of the United States, resolves:

I. That in the opinion of the section the adoption of that system would be productive of great advantage in the commercial relations of the United States with the other American republics.

II. That the secretary of the section be directed to communicate a copy of this resolution to the chairman of the proper committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

AN ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK

LAST spring a cooperative ecological survey of the Palisades Interstate Park was estab

lished by the commissioners of the Park and the department of forest zoology of The New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse. The park is a large area of about 30,000 acres under the management of joint commissioners representing the states of New York and New Jersey. The park lies along the lower Hudson, including most of the scenic portion of the Palisades, on the west bank of the Hudson, and a relatively large area (the Harriman section) south and west of West Point, in the low wooded mountains of the Hudson Highlands.

This survey is intended to relate the wild life of the park to its numerous visitors, of which during the season just closed there have been about 48,000 campers, who averaged ten days each. Investigations of the birds have been made by Professor P. M. Silloway; the plankton organisms by Dr. Gilbert M. Smith and the fish by Dr. Chas. C. Adams and Professor T. L. Hankinson, assisted by A. E. Fivaz. The first season's field work has been completed and publications on the survey are in preparation from the standpoint of park utilization. The birds have been studied from an educational and recreational, as well as an ecological, point of view. The plankton for its bearing upon the problem of drinking water needed in the park, the fish, and the bathing facilities. The fish have been studied from the standpoint of food, education and recreation. The water storage area has been greatly increased by dams, creating and enlarging ponds and reservoirs. A system of management for these waters and the streams is to be worked out in harmony with the aims of the park.

Those in immediate charge of the work are Mr. Edward F. Brown, manager of the camp department of the park, and Dr. Charles C. Adams, forest zoologist of the college. This is the first comprehensive ecological survey systematically conducted and intended to relate primarily the wild life forest resources of a large public park to the educational, recreational, scientific and economic activities of the park. Many of the problems are the same

general character as those of our national parks. It will require several years to complete the plans now under way. Only the more urgent problems were begun this season. This survey has the hearty support of Mr. George W. Perkins, president of the Park Commissioners, and Dean F. F. Moon, of the College of Forestry.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

THE Société Médicale des Hôpitaux de Paris elected at a recent meeting, as corresponding members: Dr. Alexander Lambert, the president-elect of the American Medical Association, director of the medical service of the American Red Cross in France; Colonel James T. Case, editor of the American Journal of Radiology and chief of the radiologic service of the American Army in France; Professor William S. Thayer of Johns Hopkins, consultant to the American Expeditionary Force; Professor Morton Prince of Tufts College; Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and Professor Beverley Robinson of the University and Bellevue Hospital, New York, a former intern of the Paris hospitals. At the same time, five British physicians were also elected, Sir Almroth Wright, Sir Bertrand Dawson, Sir Thomas Barlow, Sir Dyce Duckworth and Sir William Leishman.

We learn from the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences that among those at the Bureau of Standards are: Dr. F. W. McNair, president of the Michigan School of Mines, working on airplane engine problems; Dr. C. Nussbaum, formerly instructor in physics at Harvard University, engaged in the study of aeronautic instruments; Mr. E. P. Peck, formerly superintendent of operation of the Georgia Railway and Power Company, assisting in the standardization of electrical apparatus, and Lieutenant Henri Cretien, of the French army, who has been engaged in research work in military problems related to optics.

PROFESSOR G. F. HULL, of Dartmouth College, has been commissioned a major in the Ordnance Department, and is now in Washington.

DR. WILLIAM H. Ross, of the Bureau of Soils, has been commissioned a captain in the Chemical Warfare Service, and has been assigned to the Edgewood Arsenal, Edgewood, Maryland.

PROFESSOR ROSWELL P. ANGIER, of Yale University, is a captain in the Sanitary Corps, National Army, at the Hazelhurst Field Medical Research Laboratory, Mineola, L. I. He has been engaged in research work on psychological tests for aviators and in instructing other psychologists to give, at other aviation fields of the country, tests already devised.

MR. B. H. RAWL, chief of the Dairy Division of the Bureau of Animal Industry since 1909, has been appointed assistant chief of the bureau.

IN the U. S. National Museum Dr. Charles W. Richmond has been promoted to be associate curator of birds. Mr. Bradshaw H. Swales has been appointed honorary curator of birds' eggs.

PROFESSOR C. D. CHILD, head of the department of physics at Colgate University, is spending the current college year at Cornell University, engaged in special government research.

LIEUTENANT GEORGE O. FERGUSON, JR., associate professor of psychology at Colgate University, is stationed at Camp Lee, Virginia, in charge of the psychological examination of men in that camp.

DR. THOMAS P. MCCUTCHEON, associate professor of chemistry of the University of Pennsylvania, has been assigned to overseas duty as consultant chemist in connection with the Chemical Warfare Service. Dr. McCutcheon, who is serving in a civilian capacity, spent the entire summer in government service at Washington.

D. FOREST HUNGERFORD, professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas, has accepted a position with the United States De

partment of Agriculture, with headquarters at Athens, Ga.

MR. N. A. BENGTSAN has been appointed special representative of the War Trade Board for work in Denmark and expects to leave soon for Copenhagen. During the past summer and autumn he has been commodity expert, in charge of cereal investigations in the Bureau of Research of the War Trade Board. Next autumn Dr. Bengtsan expects to resume the duties of professor of geography at the University of Nebraska.

PROFESSOR HENRY C. COWLES, of the University of Chicago, delivered a lecture at the meeting of the Geographic Society of Chicago on November 8, entitled "Forests and Forest Politics in Illinois," substituting for Mr. Currelly, who is detained in Toronto by illness.

AT the first scientific meeting of the Zoological Society of London for the present session Professor H. M. Lefroy read a paper, illustrated by lantern slides, on the wheat weevil in Australia, which has done so much damage to the stores of the Wheat Commission.

AT a meeting of the New York Section of the American Chemical Society on November 8, the program consisted of fifteen-minute addresses on the subject of an institute for cooperative research by chemists, biologists and manufacturers as an aid in the development of the American drug industry. Addresses were made by Dr. John J. Abel, Johns Hopkins University Medical School (by letter); Dr. P. A. Levene, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; Dr. C. L. Alsberg, U. S. Bureau of Chemistry; Dr. A. S. Loevenhart, American University Experiment Station; Dr. F. R. Eldred, Eli Lilly & Co.; Dr. D. W. Jayne, The Barrett Company.

PROFESSOR HENRI L. JOLY has given a course of three public lectures in English on France's share in the progress of science, at University College, London. The first lecture, on October 22, dealt with mathematics, astronomy and physical science; the second, on October 29, with chemistry and the natural sciences, and

the third, on November 5, with biology and the medical sciences.

THE annual Thomas Hawksley lecture of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, was delivered in the hall of the Institution of Civil Engineers on October 4, by Dr. W. C. Unwin, who took as his subject "The Experimental Study of the Mechanical Properties of Materials."

THE first annual Streatfield memorial lecture was delivered on October 17, at the City and Guilds Technical College, London, by Professor W. J. Pope, who took as his subject "The future of chemistry."

THE late Dr. Magnan, the French psychiatrist, left $5,000 to the Paris Academy of Medicine, to be applied to the foundation of a triennial prize for the best work on mental medicine.

WE learn from Nature that a memorial tablet and medallion of the late Mr. F. W. Rudler, in the quadrangle of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, in which Mr. Rudler was one of the earliest professors, 1876-79, was unveiled by Professor J. Mortimer Angus, on October 18. Mr. Rudler attached great value to students' geological excursions, in regard to which he himself rendered devoted service during his membership of the Geologists' Association. A few of his friends are, therefore, desirous of creating a fund to be capitalized, the annual income from which is to be devoted, on the recommendation of the professor of geology, towards the defrayment, where necessary, of the expenses of students during such excursions.

OVER $3,000 has been contributed to the Ramsay Memorial Fund in the United States up to November 1. It is hoped that the American subscription may reach $10,000 by January 1, 1919. Checks should be made payable and sent to the Ramsay Memorial Fund Committee, W. J. Matheson, treasurer, 2 Burling Slip, New York City.

PROFESSOR VOLNEY M. SPALDING, formerly professor of botany in the University of Mich

igan, died at Loma Linda, California, on November 12, at the age of sixty-nine years.

MR. DOUGLAS C. MABBOTT, biologist of the Biological Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture, has been killed in action in France, at the age of twenty-five years. He was the author of papers on American wild ducks and their food habits.

WINTHROP D. FOSTER, of the zoological division, U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, died of pneumonia, on October 6, at Washington, aged thirty-eight years.

CLARENCE SIDNEY VERRILL was lost on the Princess Sophia, which was wrecked on October 26, on the coast of British Columbia, with the loss of all on board. He was a mining engineer and was returning from the examination of a gold mine. He was the youngest son of Addison Emery Verrill, professor emeritus of zoology at Yale University.

THE annual meeting of the American Association of Anatomists which is usually held during the Christmas vacation, has been postponed until the spring, and will be held possibly during the Easter recess.

THE Council of the American Psychological Association has voted to abandon the annual meeting scheduled for December, 1918. This action seemed advisable in view of the prospect of a very small attendance and many difficulties in the arrangements for the meeting.

PROFESSOR JOHN W. HARSHBERGER has been elected president of the University of Pennsylvania chapter of the Sigma Xi. The program for the session of 1918-19 is as follows:

November 20, The Engineering Departments, University of Pennsylvania, speaker-Professor Robert H. Fernald. "Is Our Fuel Supply nearing Exhaustion?"

January 22, The John Harrison Laboratory of Chemistry. Speakers-Provost Smith and Professor Walter H. Taggart.

March 12, The Psychological Department, College Hall. Speaker-Professor Lightner Witmer. May 1, Joint Meeting of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

June 11, Gardens of the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. Speaker-Dr. Charles B. Penrose, president of the Zoological Society.

THE meeting of the Connecticut Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was held at Yale University on November 20. At the afternoon session in the Mason Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Mr. J. Arnold Norcross presided and addresses were made by Mr. C. C. Sibley, plant engineer of the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, on its new Dixwell Avenue Power Plant, and by Mr. C. E. Libbey, construction engineer, with Hollis French & Allen Hubbard, Boston, Mass., on the new University Central Heating Plant on Ashmun Street. At the evening session at 7.30 in Lampson Lyceum there was a joint meeting with the United States Naval Unit. Professor Breckenridge presided and an illustrated address was given by Mr. W. H. Blood, of the American International Shipbuilding Corporation, Philadelphia, Pa., on "The Building of the Hog Island Shipyard."

THE Madrid correspondent of the Journal of the American Medical Association writes that Dr. Gomez Casas, physician of the Almeira prison, reported to his superiors the presence of influenza among the inmates of the prison early in the first epidemic. The governor of Almeira was not pleased at having his province invaded by the disease, and he summoned Dr. Casas and ordered him to sign a written report to the effect that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis, and retract his statements as to the existence of influenza in the prison. The Colegio Medico publicly announced that it would stand by Dr. Casas and subscribe the amount to pay the fine which a governor ignorant of his duties had imposed on him. At the same time an official protest was filed with the central public health authorities.

THE Ordnance Department of the Army, particularly in the production and Inspection Divisions, is in need of men with training in the manufacture of explosives and the related raw materials. The manufacture of explosives is developing out of proportion to the number of men in the country who have had training and experience in that work. To meet this condition the War Department Committee on

Education and special training is establishing in the department of chemical engineering at Columbia University in the City of New York an Ordnance Department School of Explosives Manufacture. The object of this school is to give men with proper preliminary qualifications the training necessary to fit them for use by the Ordnance Department as commissioned officers in the supervision of factory operation and inspection of the finished products in plants manufacturing explosives and raw materials for explosives. The school will be only for enlisted men in the military service who are detailed for instruction in the school by the Ordnance Department.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE will of the late Dr. John C. McClenathan, Connellsville, the value of whose estate is approximately $160,000, leaves the bulk, after the death of his widow, to Washington and Jefferson Colleges to erect a building to be known as the McClenathan Hall of Science.

THE Loyola University School of Medicine has recently been reorganized. The buildings and equipment of the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery were purchased in September, 1917, making an important addition to the resources of the school. In the department of anatomy Dr. R. M. Strong, professor of anatomy at Vanderbilt University Medical School has been appointed professor and head. Dr. Thesle T. Job has been made assistant professor of anatomy.

Ar Cornell University Mrs. Dorothy Russell Naylor, '13, has been appointed instructor in mathematics in place of Percy A. Fraleigh, '17, who has received leave of absence for National service. Frances G. Wick, '05, has been appointed acting assistant professor of physics for the current year.

DR. S. D. ZELDIN, of the College of Hawaii, has been appointed professor of mathematics in Olivet College.

DR. HORACE LEONARD HOWES has been appointed professor of physics at the New Hamp

shire College to succeed Professor V. A. Suydam, resigned. He is a graduate of Syracuse University in the class of 1905 and took his doctor's degree at Cornell in 1915. While at Cornell he was instructor in physics and research assistant to Professors E. L. Nichols and Ernest Merritt.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE FOOD OF AQUATIC HEMIPTERA

THE reading of an interesting article in this JOURNAL by Hungerford,' that discussed the food supply of certain aquatic bugs, caused me to look up some of my own notes on the food of water-striders and other aquatic Hemiptera. These notes were recorded mainly from observations made near Urbana, Ill., during the years 1911-13 inclusive.

Hungerford states: "In the literature dealing with aquatic Hemiptera, we are informed that without exception they are predatory: those which dwell upon the surface capturing such flies and other terrestrial insects as may chance to fall into the water, and those that pass their lives beneath the surface preying upon aquatic insects and similar organisms." My own conclusions, regarding the food of water bugs, formed from reading the literature on aquatic Hemiptera, if expressed briefly, would be very similar to those just quoted, with some exceptions.

At the present, I recall three writers who mention that aquatic bugs use other food besides insects. Miall makes the following statement: "To this suborder [Heteroptera] belong a number of very common aquatic insects. They are all predatory, feeding upon small insects or crustaceans." This writer1 points out that, "Nepa feeds mostly on small insects, Ranatra, upon the water-flea (Daphnia) and other aquatic animals." The following is another quotation from Miall: The in

1 "Notes Concerning the Food Supply of Some Water Bugs," SCIENCE, N. S., Vol. XLV., pp. 336337, 1917.

2 Ibid., p. 336.

3"The Natural History of Aquatic Insects,'' London, 1903, p. 346.

▲ Ibid., p. 354.