THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the Academy of Medicine of Toronto has adopted a resolution calling for one united medical service in Canada to take the place of the present arrangements of a Canadian Army Medical Corps and a Canadian Hospitals Commission. The academy urges that medical care of all soldiers be placed directly under a surgeon general, to be known as Surgeon General of Canada, who should be directly responsible to the minister of militia, who should have a seat in the militia council. He will perform the duties of director of medical services, invalids and be chief medical officer of the hospitals commission and of its executive. The academy recommended Surgeon-General John Taylor Fotheringham, C.M.G., Toronto, recently returned from overseas, for this position.

THE emperor of Austria, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, has organized a new state department, the chief of which is to be known as the minister of hygiene and social welfare.

THE yacht Anton Dohrn, of the department of marine biology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has been offered to and accepted by the United States Navy for the period of the war.

The board of managers of the New York Botanical Garden announces plans to expend $500,000 in developing the garden. Three of the largest works projected are the construction of a museum laboratory wing which will cost $100,000, the building of a wing to the east museum to cost $100,000, and a central display greenhouse to cost $75,000. An orchid. greenhouse will cost $24,000, and a like sum will be spent in building an economic plant greenhouse. Two tropic plant greenhouses, a garden school greenhouse, experimental and investigation greenhouses also are to be constructed. In a report of the garden's endowment committee it is announced that a contribution of $2,000 has been made by Mrs. Robert E. Westcott for the construction of the new rose garden stone stairway, and a gift of $4,000 has been made by Mrs. Frederick F. Thompson for the construction of the school

garden shelter on the eastern bank of the Long Lake at the southern end of the new school garden.

THE fourth meeting of the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies of Great Britain was held on June 13 at the Royal Society, with Sir J. J. Thomson, F.R.S., in the chair. The report of the executive committee for the past half year showed that a number of questions of scientific and industrial importance have come before the board. Among these are the need for an anthropological survey of the British people, the maintenance of the international catalogue of scientific literature and the desirability or otherwise of adopting the metric system throughout the British Isles.

AN opportunity for research work in sociology with some time for other graduate work if desired awaits a suitable applicant at the University of Chicago and for this $1,200 has been set aside for each of the two years it is expected the investigation will require. By this announcement it is hoped to secure some one already specializing in sociology. Inquiry for further details may be addressed to Professor Albion W. Small, University of Chicago, or to Dr. E. R. LeCount, Rush Medical College, Chicago.

THE Bureau of Economic Geology of the University of Texas has just issued a report on the Thrall Oil Field by J. A. Udden, H. P. Bybee, E. P. Schoch and W. T. Read. This field was discovered three years ago, in Williamson County, and it proves to be unique for the United States, the greater part of the production coming from a metamorphic chlorite derived from an extremely basic igneous rock. This rock apparently represents a submarine eruption in the Cretaceous sea.

THE Medical Record states that the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, through the research work of Dr. Carroll G. Bull and Miss Ida W. Pritchett, will undertake to supply the allied armies with a serum which is believed to be an effective antitoxin for the gas bacillus producing gangrene. Cultures of the gangrene bacillus were obtained in Europe last year and these investigators have experi

mented upon animals and produced the hopedfor results.

UNDER the direction of Dr. Roger Adams, of the division of organic chemistry of the University of Illinois, a group of graduate students is engaged in preparing chemicals that are being sold to as many as fifteen different university laboratories, to the Bureau of Chemistry at Washington, to large distributing houses, and commercial firms. One chemical, for which there has been a shortage ever since the work began, is now being supplied from this laboratory in sufficient quantities to meet all demands of the country.

THE annual meeting of the Incorporated Society for Extending the Rothamsted Experiments in Agricultural Science was held on November 6. According to the report in the London Times Lord Crawford, president of the British Board of Agriculture, moved a resolution declaring that the work of the society was a matter of national importance deserving wide public support. He said that much would be expected from agriculture after the war, and much more, therefore, would have to be drawn from the knowledge, experience and guidance of such societies as that of Rothamsted. It would be really deplorable if any single branch of its activity had to be dropped during the war. It was at Rothamsted that the first practical demonstration of the value of artificial manures was consummated. He was fully conscious of the urgent necessity for the comprehensive treatment of this great subject, but the time was not yet ripe for any public announcement. while, he trusted that the work of Rothamsted would continue and, in spite of the war, extend in the sphere and scale of its operations. In any future scheme he was certain that Rothamsted would take a high and honorable place, and would contribute to the research which was essential to the future of British agriculture. Dr. E. J. Russell, the honorable secretary and director of the Rothamsted Station, stated that the ordinary work at Rothamsted had been curtailed, but it was not being

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allowed to drop. Women had been brought in, and when peace came the men would come back to find the experiments a stage more developed than when they left. They could see the possibility of using to the great advantage of agriculture some of the machinery which was now being used for non-agricultural purposes. They hoped for some well-considered scheme for agricultural development in which the research stations, colleges, agricultural institutes and similar organizations would play a definite part.

Nature remarks: "The science of economic aviculture has probably reached a higher standard in the United States than in any other part of the world. This work is carried on by the Department of Agriculture, which, for years past, has spared no pains to enact laws and formulate schemes for the conservation of bird-life, whether for purely economic ends or for esthetic reasons. As a consequence, it has now available a mass of evidence as to the status and value of every species within its realms. The latest evidence of its enlightened policy takes the form of a bulletin-No. 465-on the propagation of wild-duck foods. The haunts and food values of no fewer than nineteen groups of plants, comprising sixty species, are here described, together with instructions as to stocking water in need of bait for these valuable birds. The characteristics of wild rice, wild celery, pondweeds, arrowheads, chufa, wild millet and water-lilies are all carefully set forth, and this information is accompanied by carefully collected data as to their attractiveness in regard to particular species of wild ducks. Had we followed its lead years ago our own Board of Agriculture would now be able to speak with authority when called on to sift the value of the crudely formed opinions of local agricultural chambers as to the usefulness or otherwise of our native birds in relation to our food supply. The latter is of vital importance, and the clamor for legislation is sometimes insistent. This war has done much for us already; perhaps it may yet bring into being a bureau of ornithology, such as is to be found now in

the cantonment at stated intervals and with army surgeons conduct thorough mental tests and physical examinations. The new psychopathic building at the Spring Grove State Hospital, designed for acute cases of mental disease, has been offered to the government, and if it is accepted, patients from Camp Admiral will be treated there. The psychopathic building will also be useful in treating soldiers returned from the front, 18 to 20 per cent. of whom, it has been found in England, are suffering from mental breakdown, temporary or permanent.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS

AUSTIN C. DUNHAM, of Hartford, has offered as a gift to the Connecticut Agricultural College at Storrs, his Newington farm, which he has made into one of the best equipped farms in the state. Mr. Dunham has spent about $50,000 in improving the property and offers it to the college simply on the condition that it be used for school purposes. The farm consists of 130 acres and has at present forty head of cows and heifers and sixty-five pigs. Four silos have been built, housing 150 tons of silage, and eighty tons of hay have been gathered.

ACCORDING to a decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Connecticut, Yale University must pay to the state inheritance taxes amounting to about $34,000. The university inherited about $750,000 from the estate of Justus B. Hotchkiss. The Probate Court decided that it was not liable to taxation on the ground that Yale, being exempted by law from paying taxes on property in this city, was thereby constituted a public institution receiving state aid.

Two members of the faculty of Cornell University who retired this year have been elected to emeritus professorships. They are George S. Moler, emeritus professor of physics, and R. C. Carpenter, emeritus professor of experimental engineering.

DR. VICTOR C. ALDERSON, consulting engineer of Boston, has been tendered the presi

dency of the Colorado School of Mines at Golden, Colo. Dr. Alderson served as president of the school for four years, retiring three years ago. He has not yet indicated whether he will accept.

PROMOTIONS in the faculty of the New York State College of Agriculture have been made as follows: Assistant professors promoted to the grade of professors: J. R. Schramm, botany; R. H. Wheeler, extension teaching; H. O. Buckman, soil technology.

PROFESSOR V. ASCOLI, of the chair of medical pathology of the University of Pavia, has been appointed professor of clinical medicine at Rome to succeed Bacelli.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE CLIMATIC INDEX OF BONNEVILLE LAKE BEDS

BECAUSE of the fact that they have been thought to furnish undoubtable stratigraphic testimony in support of the conception of the duality of the Glacial Epoch the lacustral deposits of the Great Salt Lake basin of Utah hold at this time an especial interest. Where best exposed these beds occupy a vertical space of about 100 feet; but their total thickness is without question considerably greater than this figure. The main body of the formation comprises fine laminated calcareous materials, of uniform texture and yellow color. An upper section, of irregular thickness, from 2 to 20 feet, is notably limy, white and more or less indurated in certain layers. The white marly upper capping is sharply separated from the yellow lower beds by an irregular line of juncture which has every appearance of being a marked plane of unconformity.

The common historical interpretation of the general section is briefly this: The lower yellow beds are regarded as representing river silts deposited in the lake over a very long period of time when the early Bonneville water-level was nearly as high as the later Bonneville shore-line. The white marly beds are depositions of a shorter high-water stage of the lake. The irregular line between the white and yellow sections are viewed in the

light of an unconformity, the interval represented being a stage between two high water marks when the old lake-waters completely dried up. Early Bonneville yellow beds are correlated in time with a first epoch of humidity superinduced by conditions of glaciation; while the white later Bonneville beds belong to the second Glacial epoch. The two parts of the section are thus represented as being separated by an erosional interval of long duration, occupying a time between two epochs of large rainfall and notable ice-forming.

Two features in particular militate strongly against these deposits either being normal stream-silts or being laid down during two distinct epochs separated by a long epoch of excessive dryness. This simpler and very different interpretation for the phenomena presented does not postulate violent and frequent changes of climate. It appeals to no other than the ordinary climatic conditions and geologic processes that prevail to-day in the region. It takes into account only the familiar geological activities of the desert.

Close examination of the deposits discloses the fact that they are not typical stream-silts, but that they have a grain very much coarser. In size the individual particles appear to be about midway between those of normal clay and fine sand. Although obscurely laminated the material in all physical aspects seems to be essentially loess or adobe. Thus, instead of being normal river-silts swept into still water these deposits really represent dusts, borne by the winds from the neighboring deserts, that have dropped on the surface of the lake waters and have settled to the bottom.

Compared with desert deposits of other regions the white marly upper beds of the section which have such a variable thickness are essentially what the Mexicans call caliche. It is formed through ordinary soil tension by which lime salts of porous formations below are carried to the surface of the ground, where the water evaporates, leaving behind the solids. In some places there is sufficient lime deposited interstitially to give the beds the aspect of chalk. Upon further induration some layers passed into limestone.

The juncture of the yellow and white beds is a sharp, irregular line that is easily mistaken for an erosion uncomformity. That it is not at all probable that in the Bonneville basin this line actually represents uncomformable relationships between the beds above and those below is clearly indicated by the fact that the phenomenon is a common one throughout arid lands where porous formations reach sky.

The yellow Bonneville clays do not appear, therefore, to represent a deposit which was laid down during a high-water precursor of the high-stage Lake Bonneville; and the irregular line separating the yellow and white sections does not stand for a long interlacustrine epoch when the lake waters were completely desiccated, during a dry interglacial time. The white marls seem to be very recent in formation, produced directly from the yellow clays long after Bonneville waters had finally receded. Their especial climatic significance is manifestly very different from that formerly postulated. The ascribed peculiarities are really every-day desert phenomena.

DES MOINES, IA.

CHARLES KEYES

INTERNAL TELIA OF RUSTS

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: A recent article1 lists up the references in pathological literature regarding the production of internal rust spores. The present writer in 19122 described such internal production of teliospores in the leaf of Xanthium Canadense, in the following

words:

Within the mixture of parenchyma cells and mycelium, which replaces the normal tissue, there are cystlike bodies which are composed of masses of mycelium. These objects are hollow spheres, and from the inner surface arise telial spores exactly similar to those borne in the normal way upon the exterior of the leaf.

1"Discovery of Internal Telia Produced by a Species of Cronartium," by R. H. Colley, Jour. Agr. Research, VIII., No. 9, February 26, 1917, pp. 329-332.

2" Relations of Parasitic Fungi to their Host Plants," Bot. Gazette, LIII., No. 5, May, p. 381.