ing 70 kilos, or 154 lb., doing average work during eight hours a day the food as purchased should have an energy value of 3,300 calories a day, but that a reduction of 10 per cent. could be supported for some time without injury to health. The commission accepted the figures of Professor Lusk, one of the representatives of the United States, for the proportion to be assigned to women and to children of different ages. At the second meeting, in Rome, the metric ton (a metric ton is 0.9842 ton British) was adopted as the unit for estimating the weights of the various foods produced in each allied country. A 66 man value "-that is to say, the number of average men equivalent to the population of each of the allied countries-was established, and was taken as a basis for calculating the amount of food to be provided for the adequate nourishment of the total population of each country. An estimate was then formed of the home production of the soil furnished by each allied country in 1918-19 to serve as a basis for determining the amount of food available for men and animals, respectively, in each country.

It was not thought desirable to fix a minimum meat ration, in view of the fact that no absolute physiological need exists for meat, since the proteins of meat can be replaced by other proteins of animal origin, such as those contained in milk, cheese and eggs, as well as by proteins of vegetable origin. It was, however, considered desirable to fix a minimum ration of fat; this it was decided should be 75 grams-about 25 oz. per average man a day. It is to be noted that the fat ration may be made up from fats partly of vegetable origin and partly of animal origin, and the commission expresses the opinion that if the amount of fat of vegetable origin was found to be insufficient it might be necessary to maintain a certain stock of animals to make good the deficit.

The commission has recommended that the maximum possible proportion of all cereals except oats should be reckoned in when calculating the amount of calories available for man. As to milling, it has advised that a

uniform extraction of 85 per cent. should be adopted in all the allied countries; this will vary from 80 per cent. in summer to 90 per cent. in winter, and will apply to the United States only as regards their internal consumption, and then only in case of scarcity. While man should always take precedence over animals in the allocation of food by governments, it is recognized that the methods adopted for reserving the maximum possible proportion of the cereals for the use of man may vary in each country. The opinion is therefore expressed that in fixing prices it is the prices of animal products which should be limited rather than those of such vegetable products as may serve equally well for feeding men and animals. The production of veal, pork and poultry at the expense of other food immediately available for man should therefore be discouraged and this may best be done by fixing prices for those animal products which will make it unprofitable for the producer to fed the animals on cereals. The chief subject now under consideration is the examination of statistics which will render it possible to ascertain the calorie value of the home production of each of the allied countries. The comparison of these figures with the needs in calories of the population of each country will enable the commission to deduce the amount of imports necessary for the maintenance of the population, or the exportable surplus, as the case may be.

The commission has also expressed the opinion that any propaganda having for its object the encouragement of food production and of economy in the use of food should be organized and directed by men of science well acquainted with the subject. The members of the commission itself fulfil this condition, to the importance of which we had occasion some time ago to call attention, for this elementary principle was at first neglected in this country. It appears that the truth of this principle is beginning to be recognized in Germany, where voices are being raised in favor of consultation of scientific and medical experts by the authorities.

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

THE ASPHALT INDUSTRY IN 1917

THE war has stimulated activity in the domestic markets for asphaltic material derived from crude petroleum and for imported asphalt, but the relative abundance and adaptability of those materials has lessened the demand for the native bitumens and for the various types of bituminous rock produced in this country, according to statistics just completed under the supervision of J. D. Northrop, of the United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior.

The native bitumen, including maltha, gilsonite, elaterite and grahamite, bituminous rock and ozokerite, marketed from mines and quarries in the United States in 1917 was 80,904 short tons, a loss of 17,573 tons, or 18 per cent., compared with 1916. The market value of the output in 1917 was $735,924, a loss of $187,357, or 20 per cent., compared with 1916.

The production of gilsonite, bituminous sandstone, bituminous (elaterite) shale, and ozokerite was increased considerably in 1917, but the gain credited to these varieties was insufficient to offset the loss in the production of elaterite, grahamite and bituminous limestone.

The quantity of manufactured asphalt (including road oils and flux) produced in 1917 from petroleum of domestic origin increased about 2 per cent. compared with 1916, and the quantity of corresponding material manufactured in this country from Mexican petroleum increased about 13 per cent., as a consequence of which the net gain over the production in 1916 was nearly 7 per cent.

The total sales in 1917 of manufactured asphalt derived from domestic petroleum amounted to 701,809 short tons, valued at $7,734,691. This total includes 327,142 tons, valued at $4,011,980, of solid and semisolid products used in the paving and roofing industries, and 374,667 tons, valued at $3,722,711, of liquid products, including road oils, flux and asphaltic paints.

California maintained its supremacy in the production of oil asphalt. Its output from 14 petroleum refineries in 1917 aggregated 220,

294 tons, valued at $2,100,252, and included 135,160 tons of solid and semisolid products, valued at $1,486,609, and 85,134 tons of liquid products, valued at $613,643. Refiners handling oil from the Oklahoma-Kansas field produced 206,223 tons of oil asphalt, valued at $1,957,493, including 73,410 tons of solid and semisolid products, valued at $747,651, and 132,813 tons of liquid products, valued at $1,227,842.

The total sales in 1917 of manufactured asphalt derived from Mexican petroleum amounted to 645,613 short tons, valued at $7,441,813, and included 338,485 tons of solid and semisolid products, valued at $4,657,152, and 307,128 tons of liquid products, valued at $2,784,661.

The

The imports of native asphalt, oil asphalt, and bituminous rock for consumption in the United States in 1916 aggregated 187,886 short tons, valued at $993,115, a gain in quantity of 40,173 tons, or 28 per cent., over 1916. exports of unmanufactured asphalt in 1917 amounted to 30,107 short tons, valued at $587,256, a loss of 10,709 tons, or 35 per cent., compared with 1916. In addition asphalt products to the value of $585,472, compared with $494,895 in 1916, were exported in 1917.

TRAINING CAMPS FOR INSTRUCTORS TO PREPARE COLLEGE MEN FOR MILITARY SERVICE

THE War Department authorizes the following statement from the Adjutant General's office.

Training camps to fit men to act as assistant instructors in the new Students' Training Corps will be held at Plattsburg, N. Y., Fort Sheridan and Presidio, Calif., from July 18 to September 16. Colleges have been invited to send a limited number of picked students and members of the faculties to these camps.

The camps will be conducted with a view to teaching the attendants to give military instruction to students, and it is believed that satisfactory results can be obtained from an intensive 60-day course.

Further instructions relative to the new corps have just been issued. These are being sent to all colleges that have signified their

willingness to establish corps among their students.

The purpose of the new plan, as shown in the new instructions, is to develop as a great military asset the large body of young men in the colleges. This will be accomplished by providing efficient military instruction under the supervision of the War Department for students in all colleges enrolling the required minimum of students. In order to receive this instruction, all students over eighteen years of age must volunteer and enlist in the army of the United States.

Only colleges which can provide an enrollment of 100 or more able-bodied students over eighteen years will be entitled to the course. The intention is to extend the system of instruction for college students to the largest practicable extent in view of the available supply of officers and equipment. To be classified as one of the institutions of college grade to which the privilege of maintaining a Students' Army Training Corps unit is extended, an institution must require for admission to its regular curricula graduation from a standard secondary school or an equivalent; must provide general collegiate or professional curricula covering at least two years of not less than 33 weeks each; and must be carried in the lists of higher institutions prepared by the United States Commissioner of Education.

Institutions of college grade will include, providing all other conditions are met: Colleges of arts and sciences; engineering schools; schools of mines; agricultural colleges; colleges of pharmacy, veterinary, medicine; teachers' colleges, and law, medical, dental, graduate and normal schools; junior colleges and technical institutions. Students enrolled in preparatory departments of these schools and colleges can not at present be considered eligible for enlistment in the units, and such students can not be counted by college authorities in reckoning the 100 able-bodied students for a military training unit.

The character of the training will depend on the kind of training unit which is organized in the particular institution. The standard time to be allotted to military work will be 10 hours

per week during the college year supplemented by six weeks of intensive training in a summer camp. The 10 hours a week will not involve the hours of outdoor work in drill.

The summer camps will be an important feature of the system. These will be active for six weeks, and there will be an intensive and rigid course of instruction under experienced officers.

The plan will provide approximately 650 hours of military work per annum. It is expected that this will qualify a considerable percentage of the students to enter officers' training camps on being called to the colors, and a large percentage of the remainder to serve as noncommissioned officers.

Officer instructors and noncommissioned officer instructors will be provided by the War Department when available. Officers returning from overseas and unfit for further field service will be utilized. The government will supply the uniforms and equipment whenever available.

The Students' Army Training Corps will be supervised and controlled by the training and instruction branch, war plans division of the General Staff, in accordance with the instructions of the Chief of Staff. An advisory board to this committee, representing educational interests, has already been appointed by the Secretary of War. This will insure the closest cooperation between the War Department and the colleges.

GUARDING SOLDIERS' CAMPS AGAINST FLIES AND MOSQUITOES

THE following statement is authorized by the War Department from the Surgeon General's office:

To guard troops stationed in camps and cantonments from disease carried by mosquitoes and flies, the medical department of the Army has installed a system of prevention which is safeguarding not only the soldiers but also civilians living in the neighborhood of training camps.

There is attached to each camp a division surgeon who is responsible for the health of the camp. Assisting him is a sanitary inspector who has the assistance of a sanitary

engineer and from 100 to 200 enlisted men who are continually employed in work designed to protect the health of the soldiers.

Special attention is now being given in all camps to cleaning up spots where mosquitoes and flies breed. In some cases it has been necessary to dig channels in streams, drain swamps, and put in elaborate ditching systems in order to clean up stagnant pools and streams. In those cases where it has been found impossible or impracticable to drain. swamps and to do other work of a similar nature, there has been installed a system for keeping these slow-moving streams and still bodies of water covered with oil. At all points within the camp where there is the slightest possibility of mosquitoes or flies breeding daily spraying of oil is done.

Arrangements have been completed wth the Federal Public Health Service to carry out a similar program in the territories adjacent to the camps. The Health Service has agreed to fill bogs, open streams and drain swamps and continue the oil spraying for a distance of 1 mile around all camps.

Special precautions have been taken to prevent the spread of disease by flies. With the approach of the fly season a general order was sent to all division surgeons and other health officers to take all necessary steps to prevent the breeding of flies. Instructions were given on the disposal of materials that were likely to become breeding spots. Arrangements were made to protect all food from flies. With this end in view all buildings in which food is prepared or stored were screened. The entrance to the buildings have been vestibuled. An added guard is the placing of flytraps in all buildings. An average of 6,000 such traps have been placed in each camp. More than 22,700,000 square feet of screening has been placed in all camps.

THE WEATHER BUREAU AND DR. CLEVELAND

ABBE

THE Secretary of Agriculture has removed Dr. Cleveland Abbe, Jr., from his position in the Weather Bureau by the following order:

For the good of the service you are hereby removed from your position as meteorologist in the

Weather Bureau of this department, effective at the termination of July 3, 1918.

In transmitting Mr. Houston's order Dr. C. F. Marvin, chief of the Weather Bureau wrote:

I find myself confronted with the most painful duty of transmitting to you the inclosed letter, received this morning from the department, removing you from the government service. The reasons for this action are connected altogether with your conduct and your long-standing and generally wellknown friendly sympathies for the imperial German government.

The bureau is not in possession of any of the details of investigation or records leading to this action by the secretary, but it is known to result from investigations made by the Department of Justice, and which I may say were not the result of any suggestions or representations by employees of the Weather Bureau, but were initiated entirely by outside sources.

A searching inquiry of your innermost heart in respect to your attitude toward the United States government must convince you that patriotism and genuine loyalty to the United States are absolutely incompatible with friendly sentiment for German

ism.

Denial of these charges is made in a letter written to Dr. Marvin by Dr. Abbe on July 7. The letter follows:

Your communication of the third, transmitting the very brief but astounding and inexplicable letoverter of the Secretary of Agriculture, so whelmed me with new duties and emotions that I have but now come to the realization of the unjust and even insulting accusations it contains to the effect that I have "friendly sympathies for the imperial German government" and "friendly sentiments for Germanism." These I must indignantly deny.

We have spoken together on this subject and you know that I have always distinguished between the German people and the actions of the imperial government since 1914, and I am glad to see that your letter indicates that you do not believe the truth of the statements you make concerning me. If you did believe them, duty would have required you to report me to the Department of Justice; but you state explicitly that the present action is "not the result of any suggestions. or representations by the employees of the Weather Bureau.'' However, since you have placed such a statement

concerning me in the Weather Bureau files on this matter, I must ask to register herewith, in the same files, my indignant denial of any friendly feeling toward or sympathy for the imperial German government and my abhorrence of its official acts. I also repudiate indignantly the suggestion that I have, or could have, anything in common with what is now currently known as "Germanism."'

It should not be necessary, but I once again do protest my sincere, genuine and undivided loyalty to the United States and to its government, its ideals, and particularly its published objects in this war. The most searching inquiry of my own acts and feelings fails to reveal to me any deficiency in this respect. It is well known to you that I have subscribed to the extent of my ability to the second and third liberty loans, to the Red Cross and its work, and to other activities.

You are, yourself, convinced of the truth of my statements, and, as you do not wish to see an unjust disgrace laid upon the name I bear, I believe you will aid my efforts to secure the common justice of an opportunity to learn from the Secretary of Agriculture the charges collected against me and to answer them fully in his presence.

GROVE KARL GILBERT

IN the Journal of Geology Professor Thomas C. Chamberlin pays the following editorial tribute to the late Dr. Gilbert:

The passing of Dr. Gilbert after almost seventy-five years of activity deprives geological science of one of its ablest and most honored representatives. It is permitted to few men to leave an equally enviable record. To an unusual degree his work was distinguished by keenness of observation, by depth of penetration, by soundness in induction, and by clarity of exposition. It is doubtful whether the products of any other geologist of our day will escape revision at the hands of future research to a degree equal to the writings of Grove Karl Gilbert. And yet this is not assignable to limitation of field, or to simplicity of phenomena, or to restriction in treatment. The range of his inquiries was wide, his special subjects often embraced intricate phenomena, while his method was acutely analytical and his treatment tended always to bring into declared form the basal principles that underlay the phenomena in hand.

In the literature of our science the laccolith will doubtless always be associated with the name of Gilbert. In its distinctness as a type, in its uniqueness of character, and in the definite place it was

given at once by common consent, one may almost fancy a figurative resemblance between the laccolith and its discoverer and expositor. Gilbert's monographs on the Henry Mountains and on Lake Bonneville will long stand as unexcelled models of monographic treatment. His contributions to physiographic evolution, particularly his analysis of the processes that end in base-leveling, link his name with that of Powell, and give to these two close friends a unique place as joint leaders in interpreting morphologic processes. Glacial and hydraulic phenomena were also fields in which Gilbert's powers as an investigator and expositor were signally displayed.

In accuracy of delineation, in clearness of statement, and in grace of diction Gilbert's contributions are certain long to stand as models of the first order. His personality was of the noblest type; he was a charming companion in the field; he was a trusted counselor in the study. The high place he has held in the esteem of coworkers is quite certain to merge into an even higher permanent place to be accorded him by the mature judgment of the future.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

THE annual convocation meeting of the American Federation of Biological Societies will be held this year in Baltimore. The date of the meeting is from December 30 to January 1 inclusive. The federation includes the following national societies: The American Physiological Society, the American Society of Biological Chemists, The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and the American Society for Experimental Pathology.

DR. J. M. T. FINNEY and Dr. William S. Thayer, chief consultants of the Medical Service of the American Expeditionary Forces, have received promotions advancing their rank from major to colonel. The following named officers have been promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel: Thomas R. Boggs, James T. Case, George W. Crile, Harvey Cushing, Joel W. Goldthwait, James F. McKernon, Charles H. Peck, Thomas A. Salmon, Hugh H. Young, N. Allison and E. L. Keyes.

CAPTAIN JOSEPH LEIDY, who has been instructor in gas defense and divisional gas officer of the 30th Division, Camp Sevier,