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representative of the Army, in chemical warfare, in England. The following men, all in the Chemical Service Section, are to be with him to help in the work: Captain A. B. Ray, Captain G. M. Rollason, Lieutenant H. A. F. Eaton, and First Sergeants E. O. Hobbs, L. C. Benedict, C. E. Wood and J. A. Bowers.

CAPTAIN LAURENCE MARTIN, of the geological department of the University of Wisconsin, was commissioned as a major on July 23, and has been detailed for duty with the Federal Staff Corps.

PROFESSOR V. H. WELLS, of the department of mathematics, of the University of Pittsburgh, has been commissioned a lieutenant in the science and research division of the signal

corps.

DR. S. A. MITCHELL, director of the Leander McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia, is at present in Jersey City engaged as instructor in navigation for the U. S. Shipping Board.

MR. WILLIAM J. HAMMER, consulting physicist and electrical engineer, of New York, has been commissioned a major in the National Army, and is assigned to duty in Washington with the newly organized Inventions Section of the General Staff.

PROFESSOR T. D. BECKWITH, head bacteriologist of the Oregon Agricultural College, has been commissioned captain in the Sanitary Corps and is ordered to report at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at New York.

PROFESSOR F. B. SANBORN, a member of the Tufts College faculty since 1899 and head of the department of civil engineering since 1901, has resigned to enter business in Boston. His firm is now engaged in important manufacturing work for the government.

MR. NEIL M. JUDD, assistant curator of anthropology in the National Museum, has recently returned from explorations of the House Rock valley and the Pahreah and Wahalla plateaus, on the north rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Several cliff dwellings and ruins were discovered. Since his return to Washington, Mr. Judd has en

listed in the aviation section of the Signal Corps.

MR. F. T. SUN, director of a fisheries school at Tientsin, China, established and maintained by the Province of Chihli, is in the United States in order to gather information and material for his school, which is devoted principally to the preparation and utilization of fishery products.

DR. HANS MOORE, director, and Albert Scheret, professor, in the agricultural college near Lucerne, Switzerland, are studying methods of agriculture in the United States.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH S. AMES, director of the physical laboratory in the Johns Hopkins University, recently gave the annual address at the University of Virginia before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The title of the address was "The Value of the Scientific Man in War."

MISS STEPHENSON has offered £2,500 to endow a studentship in the faculty of arts at Armstrong College, Newcastle, in memory of her father, the late Sir William Haswell Stephenson.

THE name of the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases, founded in the memory of John Rockefeller McCormick, has been changed to The John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases.

HENRY SHALER WILLIAMS, emeritus professor of geology at Cornell University, died of pleurisy, on July 31, at Havana, aged seventyone years. He was born in Ithaca in 1847, graduated from Yale in 1868 and held the professorship of natural science in the University of Kentucky from 1871 to 1872. He was professor of geology in the same university from 1880 to 1892 and Silliman professor at Yale University from 1892 to 1904. His research work in Cuba resulted in the development of oil fields in the island.

DR. JOHN DUER IRVING, professor of economic geology at Yale University, known for his work in ore deposits, has died of pneumonia in France, aged forty-four years. Professor Irving was one of the first from the Yale

faculty to volunteer for service at the outbreak of the war, joining the New York Engineer Corps.

PROFESSOR A. L. DANIELS, Williams professor of mathematics in the University of Vermont, died on July 18, aged sixty-nine years. He was made professor emeritus, on the Carnegie Foundation, in 1914, after a service of twentynine years.

DR. E. W. SANFORD, of the Johns Hopkins University faculty, has died in Centerville, Conn., from blood poisoning produced by accidental inoculation while engaged in research work for the government.

DR. LUDWIG EDINGER, director of the Neurologic Institute of Frankfort-on-Main, known for his work in the comparative anatomy of the nervous system, has died at the age of sixty-three years.

THE death is announced of Dr. Régis, professor of mental diseases at Bordeaux.

DR. MIGUEL SANCHEZ-TOLEDO, professor of physiology at the University of Havana, died on July 13.

GIFTS to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences amounting to $70,000 were reported at the June meeting of the board of trustees. Of this amount $60,000 was given by Mr. Samuel P. Avery for the endowment of the Institute's department of education, and $10,000 by two unnamed donors for the endowment of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a division of the institute. The terms of the Botanic Garden gift stipulate that it shall be known permanently as the "Benjamin Stuart Gager Fund," in memory of Director Gager's little son who died last spring.

THE Bureau of Oil Conservation, Oil Division, U. S. Fuel Administration, is desirous of securing a combustion engineer for each of the following districts, who will act as an inspector visiting all plants within his district using fuel oil and natural gas: Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, Tulsa, New Orleans and San Francisco. It is desirable that these men should act as

volunteers where possible, but the Administration is prepared to pay a reasonable compensation for men who can not afford to give their services to the government. Only men who have had experience in fuel oil and natural gas combustion would be of value.

AN editorial note in Nature asks: "Is the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland doing its duty in strengthening and developing scientific study and research? That is the question suggested by the report of a special committee published in the December

number of the Journal of the British Science Guild. The question was first raised in an incisive manner by Professor Soddy in an article communicated to Science Progress (January, 1917), and further inquiry seems to show that his contention is well founded. There may be some difference of opinion as to the exact interpretation of Clause A of the Trust Constitution; but there can be no doubt that the main object of the trust is to foster science, pure and applied, in all its branches, and to strengthen that side of university education which is of direct technical or commercial value. In the light of that general principle the following facts are well worthy of careful consideration: (1) Only 14 per cent. of the available funds have been expended on scientific research; (2) by endowment out of Carnegie Funds of certain scientific departments, money formerly spent in their maintenance has been diverted into other channls, so that the university on its scientific side has not really been strengthened; (3) among the twenty-two members of the board of trustees, there have never been more, and have usually been fewer, than four who could be regarded as representing science, the majority being practically ignorant of the methods, and even the meaning, of research."

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE University of London has received a bequest of £2,000 for the engineering faculty of King's College under the will of Lieutenant R. C. Hodson, a former student in the enginering department of the college, who was

killed in France last year, and a donation of £51 from Miss Gertrude Jones for the purposes of the Galton Laboratory at University College.

PRESIDENT J. G. SCHURMAN, of Cornell University, has received leave of absence from the university until next October and will devote the summer to patriotic work in France. During his absence, Professor Dexter S. Kimball, acting dean of Sibley College, is, by appointment of the board of trustees, acting president of the university.

AT the University of Minnesota Professor H. H. Kildee has resigned as professor and chief of the dairy husbandry division in order to become head of the department of animal industry at the State College of Iowa at Ames; G. E. Weaver and H. R. Searles have resigned as assistant professor and intructor, respectively, of dairy husbandry to enter government service with the marines; Miss Josephine T. Berry has resigned as professor of nutrition and chief of the Division of Home Economics in order to continue her work as assistant director for home economics of the Federal Board for Vocational Education; Miss Mildred Weigley who has been associate professor and acting chief during Miss Berry's leave of absence has been promoted to the position made vacant by Miss Berry's resignation. I. D. Charlton has resigned as professor and chief of the Division of Farm Engineering in order to enter war service; J. S. Montgomery has resigned his position as associate professor of animal husbandry in charge of the section of horse husbandry in order to accept a position with a large stock breeder.

MR. A. M. CHICKERING, instructor in biology. in Beloit College for several years, has been elected to the professorship of biology in Albion College and will assume his new duties with the opening of college in September.

MISS ALICE M. BORING has resigned as associate professor of zoology at the University of Maine and received an appointment in the premedical department of the Peking Union. Medical College, China.

DR. SETH LAKE STRONG, who was graduated from the Harvard Medical School in the class of 1913, has been appointed lecturer in surgery to the Royal Medical College at Bangkok, Siam, and will also act as surgeon to the Siravaj Hospital there.

CAPTAIN M. J. STEWART has been elected professor of pathology and bacteriology in the University of Leeds. He received his commission in 1915 and has served as pathologist to the East Leeds War Hospital, and in a similar capacity in France. A few months ago he was recalled to Leeds and undertook the acting headship of the department of pathology and bacteriology.

THE following appointments are announced in the geological sciences in Germany and Austria: Professor W. Branca has retired from his professorship in Berlin, and has been succeeded by Professor J. Pompecki, of Tübingen. Professor E. Kayser has similarly retired in Marburg, and his successor is Professor R. Wedekind. Professor L. Milch, of Greifswald, has followed the late Professor Hintze as professor of mineralogy in Breslau, and Professor E. Hennig, of Berlin, has become professor of geology at Tübingen. Professor O. Abel has been made professor of paleobiology in Vienna.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE FORMATIVE SETTING OF LACCOLITHIC MOUNTAINS

ALTHOUGH the simple "Blister" hypothesis of laccolithic intrusion, which was for the first time proposed for the Henry Mountains in southern Utah, finds so few supporters, of late little is done towards arriving at a better solution. Perusal of the descriptions of the Henry Mountains soon discloses the fact that not all of their story is yet told. There is nowhere any suggestion of relationships possibly existing between the local tectonics and the intrusive structures. Without these the phenomenon seems, as has been so often urged, a mechanical impossibility. This is the view which most Europeans take. In consequence they frequently confound laccolithic structure with that presented by denuded volcanic necks.

A number of facts militates strongly against the Henry Mountains explanation of loccolithic protuberance. Three basic premises appear wholly untenable. Most vitiating is the seeming incompetency of simple hydrostatic pressure to produce the desired results. Inadequacy of relative lithologic density is now commonly conceded. There also appears to be a radical disparity between the physical conditions accompanying the formation of laccoliths and their once supposed nearest kin the sills.

On the other hand the recent unearthing of the infrabasal make-up of certain laccoliths clearly points to a fundamental dependence of this class of mountains upon prior geologic structure. The shape of laccolithic masses is found to be cuneiform instead of lenticular; and thus at once does away with the blister idea. Quite essential appears to be the presence of crustal lines of weakness. The magmatic swelling or localization of laccoliths is discovered to be a direct function of orographic potentialities.

In seeking an immediate cause for his laccolithic intrusion Professor Gilbert did not lose sight of certain mechanical shortcomings of his explanation. These he sought to overcome by appealing to certain associated factors, which, however, later, Doctor Cross showed to be both unnecessary and not demonstrated as such. Professor J. D. Dana got over the difficulties by brushing aside all considerations except simple hydrostatic pressure and with this feature alone regarded the Gilbertian hypothesis complete. This is doubtless one of the main reasons why from a mechanical angle leading European geologists have so persistently challenged the American view of laccolithic intrusion. At the same time Old World writers on the theme offer no alternative theory to take the place of the one which they seek to discredit. Through the results of close inspection of certain laccoliths of northern New Mexico the chief objections which were raised against the Gilbert view seem to be fully met. Controlling tectonic factors which all describers of laccoliths have

missed thus appear to supply the long sought desiderata.

As a primary consideration in order that a laccolith be produced rather than any other form of volcanic manifestation it appears that the intrusive mass shall have a particular tectonic setting. Profound faulting is one of these prime factors. Another is orographic flexing by which the rigidity of certain arching strata largely maintains the load of superincumbent materials. Probably the high viscosity of acidic magmas has an important but as yet uncalculated influence on events. The remarkable infrabasal structure which the New Mexico laccoliths reveal carries the inquiry a step more remote and explains the deep-seated cause of the major faulting, whereby an orographic prism is sustained by a sharp Pre-Cambrian arch, the rigidity of which is not even yet lost although the adjoining blocks on either side are allowed to slide down, as it were, the steep sides of the old flexure.

Now at the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountain Cordillera, in northern New Mexico, there is a succession of open flexures, the amplitude of which grows less as they recede from the main axis. It is where these folds cross great fault lines that laccoliths form. Thus through direct mathematical analysis of the tectonic problems presented and in the satisfaction of the most urgent tectonic demands an adequate raison d'être for laccolithic genesis and location seems to be offered.

CHARLES KEYES

SOIL REACTION AND THE PRESENCE OF
AZOTOBACTER

DURING the summer of 1917 the writer conducted a preliminary survey of local soils to ascertain the relative nitrogen-fixing ability and prevalence of Azotobacter. Ninety soils were collected within two miles of the laboratory. The samples were taken from as widely varying soil conditions as could be located including the following: cultivated, permanent alfalfa, bluegrass sod, native pasture, barren hilltops, river bottom, sand bar, roadside and forest.

When cultured in a standard alkaline mannite solution 41 per cent. of the soils failed to show any Azotobacter growth. The average nitrogen fixed, per 100 c.c. cultural solution, in such cultures was 7.76 mg. The average nitrogen fixed in cultures showing Azotobacter was 16.22 mg. per 100 c.c. cultural solution.

A study of the reaction of these soils gave very interesting results. The hydrogen ion concentration of an aqueous extract of the soils was measured by the colorimetric method outlined by Clark and Lubs.1

The range of hydrogen ion concentration in the soil extracts, prepared by shaking one part of soil with one part of water and centrifuging expressed in PH was from 5.3 to 7.8. All of the extracts from soils which developed Azotobacter, with the exception of three, gave a P of 6.0 or above. All of those which failed to give Azotobacter, with the exception of three, gave a P of 5.9 or less. These results would indicate that the absolute reaction is probably the major factor controlling the presence of Azotobacter in soils.

H

H

P. L. GAINEY RESEARCH LABORATORY IN SOIL BACTERIOLOGY, KANSAS AGRICULTURAL EXPER. STA.

DESIGNATION OF SPECIALIZING PHYSICISTS

PHYSICISTS specializing along certain definite lines in such a way or to such a degree

that the broad term physicist is not sufficiently descriptive of their professional activities, are frequently at a loss for a suitable designation. For example, a physicist engaged in industrial physics along the lines of electricity may not consider himself an electrical engineer, and still less an "electrician" in the ordinarily accepted use of the term. What shall he call himself? A physicist specializing in mechanics may be neither a mechanical engineer nor a mechanic or mechanician. Similarly one specializing in heat may not be a heating engineer, and one in light may be no optician. The specialist in sound who is now coming into recognition more and more has not even the restricted range of choice given to the others cited.

1 Journal of Bacteriology, Vol. 2, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

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A suggested sample definition is as follows: A mechanologist is a person who is versed in the science of mechanics, or mechanology, and who may, in addition, be skilled in applying the science.

The terms proposed are so obvious that there is no need to make an extended argument in favor of their adoption. The proposals are made with the thought that the need for such terms will become more and more evident

through the increased entrance of physics and physicists into industrial and practical work, and it is well that a suitable terminology should be ready at hand for adoption as required.

CLAYTON H. SHARP

ELECTRICAL TESTING LABORATORIES,
NEW YORK CITY,
April 24, 1918

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

The Science and Practice of Photography. By JOHN R. ROEBUCK. New York, D. Appleton and Company. 1918. Pp. VIII+ 298. $2.00.

In this book Dr. Roebuck publishes the course in photography which has been given under his direction at the University of Wisconsin.

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