tured mind could have conceived and carried on as you have done the symmetrical and rapid progress which has characterized the institution. That in addition to this great work you have been able also to render highly distinguished services to various international enterprises in the form of world expositions, is another indication of the wide range of your powers.

Your broad qualities of mind have been accompanied by a warmth of heart which has bound us to you in especial affection. Our felicitations on this occasion spring therefore from sentiments of deep personal regard. You have been to each of us a wise counselor and faithful friend, no less than trusted leader and able administrator.

It is our hope that you may be spared to direct the activities of this institution for many years and to enrich with your friendship and counsel the lives of each of us and of all others who shall be privileged to come within the circle of your companionship.

THE WORK OF DR. C. G. ABBOT

DR. CHARLES GREELEY ABBOT has been appointed assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Abbot was born in Wilton, New Hampshire, May 31, 1872. He was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, class of 1895, with the degree of Master of Science, and in 1914 he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Melbourne.

Dr. Abbot was appointed assistant to Secretary Langley in the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1895, and has been engaged continuously in original researches on solar radiation in cooperation with Dr. Langley up to 1906, when he assumed entire charge of that work as director. His studies covered the fundamental problems in connection with the amount and variability of solar radiation, its absorption in the solar and terrestrial gaseous envelopes, and the effects of its variability on climate.

In recognition of the character of his work, Dr. Abbot has received the Draper gold medal from the National Academy of Sciences, the Rumford gold medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the

Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, the Société Astronomique de France, the Society of Astronomy in Mexico, the Academy of Modena in Italy, the Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft in Germany, and other organizations. The results of his work have been published largely in the Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory. He is also the author of a work entitled "The Sun," published in 1911, and has contributed many scientific papers to special astronomical and astrophysical journals.

THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS' UNION

THE thirty-sixth annual meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union was held in New York City, November 11, 1918. Owing to the epidemic of influenza the public meetings for the presentation of papers were omitted and the sessions were limited to business meetings of the council and fellows and members. The election of officers resulted in the choice of the following officers for the ensuing year: President, John H. Sage, Portland, Conn.; Vice-presidents, Dr. Witmer Stone, Philadelphia, and Dr. George Bird Grinnell, New York; Secretary, Dr. T. S. Palmer, 1939 Biltmore St., Washington, D. C.; and Treasurer, Dr. Jonathan Dwight, New York. Five additions were made to the list of honorary fellows and 14 foreign ornithologists were enrolled as corresponding fellows. The honorary fellows elected were: Dr. Roberto Dabbene, of Buenos Aires; Dr. Alwyn K. Haagner, of Pretoria, Transvaal; Dr. Einar Lönnberg, of Stockholm, Sweeden; Dr. Auguste Ménégaux, of Paris, and Dr. Peter Suschkin, of Kharkov, Russia. Five new members, Dr. Harold C. Bryant, George K. Cherrie, Lieutenant Ludlow Griscom, Lieutenant J. L. Peters and R. W. Williams, and 147 associates were added to the rolls.

Although the union has had seventy-five of its younger and more active members in military and naval service, it has survived the war without suffering any decrease in its membership, its income, or in the size of its journal.

It has not found it necessary to increase its dues and the past year has proved one of the most prosperous in its history.

The next meeting in 1919 will be held in New York City.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS THIS number of SCIENCE completes twentyfour years of weekly publication under the present editorial management. The New Era Printing Company have been the printers of the journal during this period, and it is becoming to put on record its obligation to them for efficient and distinguished work.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the national scientific societies affiliated with it are meeting this week at Baltimore, the opening session being held on the day the present issue of SCIENCE is mailed. We hope to print next week the address of the retiring president, Professor Theodore W. Richards, to be followed by the addresses of the vice-presidents and other addresses and papers presented at the meeting.

DR. A. SMITH WOODWARD, keeper of the Geological Department of the British Museum (Natural History), has been awarded the Cuvier prize by the French Academy of Sciences.

SIR HERBERT JACKSON has been appointed director of the British Scientific Instrument Research Association. He has resigned from the Daniell professorship of chemistry, King's College, London.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL RAFFAELE Bastianelli, professor of surgery in the University of Rome, has been elected an Honorary Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

PROFESSOR G. F. NOVARO retires this year from the chair of clinical surgery at the University of Genoa, having reached the age of seventy-five. He is a senator of the realm.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL FRANK P. UNDERHILL, commanding officer of the Yale Chemical Warfare Unit, has recently returned from France, where he went to introduce a cure

for men gassed at the front. This new method was adopted.

DR. A. O. LEUSCHNER, of the University of California, will relinquish the duties of dean of the graduate division at the university at the end of the academic year, and has received a commission as major, Chemical Warfare Service, with headquarters at Washington, and has been detailed to the National Research Council since the armistice. Captain W. H. Wright, astronomer in the Lick Observatory, is connected with the Range Firing Section, Ordnance Corps, Aberdeen Proving Ground. Dr. H. D. Curtis, astronomer in the Lick Observatory, is engaged in war work at the Bureau of Standards. Dr. Russell Tracy Crawford, assistant professor of astronomy in the University of California, is major in the Signal Corps, U. S. Army, at the Air Balloon School, Ft. Omaha. Dr. Dinsmore E. Alter, instructor in astronomy, University of California, recently appointed assistant professor of astronomy and physics, University of Kansas, is major in the Coast Artillery Corps, U. S. Army, in charge of the Enlisted Specialists School, Ft. Scott, California. Wallace Campbell, fellow in astronomy at the University of California, lieutenant in the engineer Corps, U. S. Army, is in France with the Expeditionary Forces.

DR. HUGH P. BAKER, who for nearly two years has been serving as a captain in the U. S. Army, has been released from service and has returned to resume his duties as dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University. On account of an injury and because of his special training, Captain Baker had far the last few months been assigned to special investigative work for the Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff at Washington, D. C. Professor F. F. Moon, of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, who has been dean of the college during the absence of Dean Hugh P. Baker, has on the return of the latter to his work, been granted a year's leave of absence to begin immediately.

Ar the school of mines of the University of Missouri Carroll R. Forbes, major of engi

neers, will return to his work as professor of mining on January 3; Charles Yancy Clayton, who has been working in the Bureau of Mines at Pittsburgh, Pa., on metallographic work for the Ordnance Department, will resume his duties as assistant professor of metallurgy; Captains E. S. McCandliss, F. E. Dennie and Lieutenant R. S. Lillard, of the mines faculty, are with the U. S. Engineers Army of Occupation in Germany, and Captain F. H. Frame, assistant professor of physics, is with the Ordnance Department in France.

DR. LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, professor of physiological chemistry at Yale, is attending the meetings of the Inter-Allied Food Commission in Europe.

DR. H. N. HOLMES, of the chemistry department at Oberlin College, has been released from part work in order to carry out research for the National Research Council, having been appointed a member of a National Committee of four on colloids.

CAPTAIN W. A. FELSING, Ph.D., has been appointed adjunct professor of chemistry at the University of Texas. He has been stationed for some time past at the government arsenal at Edgewood, Md.

CAPTAIN PAUL J. HANZLIK, Medical Corps, U. S. A., chief of the Dermatological Unit, Chemical Warfare Service, Camp Leach, American University, has returned to his position of assistant professor of pharmacology, School of Medicine, Western Reserve University.

RAYMOND L. BARNEY, scientific assistant at the Homer station of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, has been promoted to be superintendent and director of the Beaufort, N. C., biological station, to succeed S. F. Hildebrand, who was promoted last July to be superintendent of the Key West (Fla.) biological station.

Ar its last meeting the Rumford Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences voted an appropriation of $250 to Dr. Louis T. E. Thompson, of Clark University, for the development of a gun-sight with two

magnifications, for application to anti-aircraft guns.

MISS ELIZABETH S. WEIRICK, for the past eight years instructor in chemistry at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y., has resigned her position there to take up the work of textile

chemist in the chemical laboratories of Sears Roebuck and Company, Chicago.

MR. JOHN E. SCHOTT, formerly an industrial fellow at Mellon Institute, has accepted a position with the Experimental Division of the Hercules Powder Co., Kenvil, N. J.

DR. H. N. WHITFORD has recently returned from a six month's trip in the southern part of Brazil, made in behalf of the Yale Forestry School. While there he was engaged in propaganda work in forest conservation and investigative studies. He had occasion to visit one of the largest hard wood sections in the states of Espirito Santo and Minas Geraes. He also spent some time in the Araucaria forests of southern Brazil. This latter is the largest coniferous forest in the southern hemisphere.

DR. J. J. GALLOWAY, of the department of geology of Columbia University, spent the past summer in the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo, studying the geology and petroleum resources of the peninsula.

DR. L. H. BAILEY is working at the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University completing the determinations of the collection of plants he made in China in the spring of 1917.

MR. C. T. R. WILSON has been elected president of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. The vice-presidents are Dr. Doncaster, Mr. W. H. Mills and Professor Marr.

AT the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Dr. J. Horne was elected president. Vice-presidents were elected as follows: Professor D'Arcy Thompson, Professor J. Walker, Professor G. A. Gibson, Dr. R. Kidston, Professor D. Noël Paton and Professor A. Robinson.

THE Swiney lectures on geology of the Royal Society of Arts in connection with the British Museum (Natural History), are given

during December and January by Dr. Thomas J. Jehu. The subject of the course, which consists of twelve lectures, is "Man and his ancestry."

PROFESSOR J. PAUL GOODE, of the University of Chicago, gave an address entitled "The Prussian dream of world conquest" at the annual convention of the National Association of Investment Bankers, at Hotel Traymore, Atlantic City, December 9.

A MEMORIAL service for Samuel Wendell Williston, formerly professor of paleontology in the University of Chicago, was held at the university on December 8. The speakers were Professor E. C. Case, of the University of Michigan, and Professor Stuart Weller, of the 'department of geology and paleontology, and Professor Frank R. Lillie, chairman of the department of zoology.

B. O. SEVERSON, associate professor of animal breeding in the Kansas State Agricultural College, died of influenza on December 4.

CAPTAIN ADELBERT P. MILLS, assistant professor of materials in the college of civil engineering, Cornell University, died at a hospital in France, on October 20, of cerebro-spinal meningitis, aged thirty-five years.

LOUIS C. STERN, a civil engineer, died on November 30, of pneumonia, following epidemic influenza, in Boulder, Col. Mr. Stern was connected for some years with the Bureau of Surveys of Philadelphia and with the Pennsylvania State Department of Health, in the supervision of water supplies and sewage disposal throughout the state. At the time of his death he was instructor in sanitary engineering at the University of Colorado.

MR. ROBERT JOHN POCOCK, director of the Nizamiah Observatory, Hyderabad, died on October 9, aged twenty-nine years.

Nature states that the success of the British Scientific Products Exhibition, held at King's College, London, during the past summer, has led the British Science Guild to decide to organize another exhibition next year. The main object of the new exhibition will be to

stimulate national enterprise by a display of the year's progress in British science, invention and industry.

CONTESTS for the production of wheat of pure quality have been announced by the Italian Minister of Agriculture. All entrants must cultivate land in the Roman Campagna, and the kind of wheat to be grown must be selected from those announced by the Ministry which grew most favorably in that district. Contestants, to be eligible to the prizes must raise at least 20,000 pounds of wheat, of which at least half must be good for seed. The prizes offered are $400, $300, $240, $200, $160 and $100.

ACCORDING to a press report an institute for scientific-technical research for problems connected with iron and steel manufacture is being established by the Ernesto Breda Company, of Milan. This is one of the first instances in Italy of the linking together of a scientific institute with an industrial concern. At the Breda plant in Milan new scientific theories and methods formulated in the institute for research will be tried out in the plants. The institute will offer to young men desirous of learning the iron and steel industry an opportunity of learning not only the science of metallurgy, but also its practical application. The establishment of the institute at the Ernesto Breda plant in Milan came in response to an appeal for the establishment of such institutes issued by the Scientific-Technical National Committee for

Italy.

Ar the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Medical Society, the trustees of the Fiske Fund proposed the following subject for the prize essay for 1919: "Recent Classification and Treatment of Pneumonia." The prize for the best essay is $200. Each competitor must forward to the secretary of the trustees, on or before May 1 of the year of the competition, a copy of his dissertation. The trustees are Drs. Gardner T. Swarts, John M. Peters and Jesse E. Mowry, all of Providence. Dr. Peters is secretary.

A DINNER to celebrate the quartercentenary of the granting of its charter to the Royal College of Physicians of London by King Henry VIII was, as we learn from the British Medical Journal, held in France on September 23, and was attended by almost all of the Fellows of the College now serving in that country, to the number of something less than a score. The toast to the College was proposed by the chairman, Major-General Sir Wilmot Herringham, C.B., A.M.S., and a congratulatory address to the College was signed by those present.

THE American Public Health Association held its postponed annual meeting in Chicago, December 9 to 12. The program was designed to bring out all available information concerning the management of epidemic influenza, though other aspects of public health were not neglected. Among the papers on the program were: "Etiology of Influenza," by Major William H. Welch; "Mobilization of Medical and Nursing Forces," by Assistant Surgeon-General J. W. Schereschewsky; "Influenza and Pneumonia Vaccines," by Dr. E. C. Rosenow; "The Use of Sera in Influenza," by Drs. McGuire and Redden; "The Face Mask," by Colonel Charles Lynch and Dr. George Weaver; "Organization of State and Federal Forces in Epidemics," by Assistant SurgeonGeneral A. W. McLaughlin and Dr. E. R. Kelley; "History and Statistics of the Epidemic," by Assistant Surgeon-General B. S. Warren.

THE U. S. Civil Service Commission announces an open competitive examination for specialist in animal husbandry and dairying at an entrance salary ranging from $1,800 to $2,500 per year. This examination is scheduled to fill a vacancy on the editorial staff of The Experiment Station Record, States Relations Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, and the duties of the appointee will consist mainly of the preparation of technical abstracts of the current scientific literature in animal husbandry (including animal breeding and feeding) and dairying (including dairy farming).

Competitors will not be required to report for examination, but must submit applications and other material on or before January 7, 1919.

As

THE Bureau of Standards has published a "Metric Manual for Soldiers," the aim of which is to give to the American soldiers the grasp of the metric system which will enable them to think and work in metric units. recommended no tables of equivalents need be memorized. Brief tables and a vocabulary are given for reference. The units are described by actual examples likely to be encountered in military work.

THE Comet discovered by Professor Schorr, of Hamburg Observatory, on November 23, was observed on November 30 from the Naval Observatory at Washington, and the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, according to telegrams received at the Harvard Observatory. The comet is very faint, being of the fourteenth magnitude, and is visible only in large telescopes. It is in the constellation Taurus, not far from the bright star Aldebaran.

ANNOUNCEMENTS have been made in the Journal of the American Medical Association of a Spanish edition, the initial number of which will appear early in January. For the time being it will be issued semi-monthly. It is proposed to include in it practically all the scientific matter that appears in the Journal. Original articles and editorials that are of local or ephemeral interest will not be included.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE sum of £20,000 has been given to the George Watson's College, Edinburgh, by Mr. James Glass, of London, in aid of the establishment of a school of chemistry at that institution.

THE faculty of medicine of Western University, London, Ont., is planning the erection of a new medical college building at an estimated cost of $100,000.

A RESEARCH fellowship of the annual value of £150 has been founded at Guy's Hospital in