tire fertilizer industry. It is requested that this information be placed in the hands of the War Industries Board at the earliest possible moment.

By decree of September 12, the president of Cuba has modified the Commission of Plant Sanitation to an Office of Plant Sanitation with Mr. John R. Johnston, former president of the commission, remaining as chief of the office. The duties of this new office are the same as of the former commission, it being the sole office to issue certificates for the exportation of plants, in charge of all plant-quarantine problems, and entrusted with the eradication of the "black fly," Aleurocanthus woglumi, the control of the coconut budrot, the banana blight and other insect pests and plant diseases.

THE report of the Education Branch of the British Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for the year 1915-16 is summarized in Nature. The report is said to afford evidence that, despite the severe restrictions imposed by the war upon the development of agricultural education and research, much useful work was accomplished during the year under review. There was a great decrease in the numbers of students taking long courses of instruction, whereas the numbers taking short courses were more than maintained. The Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and the Agricultural College, Uckfield, Sussex, were closed and the grants were withdrawn from two other institutions as a measure of war economy. Research work suffered severely owing to the heavy drain upon the staffs for army or munition purposes, but much useful work on problems of immediate technical importance was accomplished, of which the investigations at Cambridge on wheat-breeding and at Rothamsted on soil and manurial problems may be singled out for special mention.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS

GOVERNOR JAMES E. FERGUSON, of Texas, has been impeached by the legislature. The charges against him were financial irregularities and improper interference with the board of regents of the state university. The bill

providing for the financial support of the university for the next biennium, which was vetoed by Governor Ferguson, has been re-passed by the legislature and signed by the acting governor. The professors who were dismissed at the instigation of Governor Ferguson have been reinstated.

YALE UNIVERSITY has received since commencement gifts amounting to $362,393.05. The largest was $100,000 from Mrs. Edward H. Harriman for the Harriman Fund for Obstetrics in the Medical School. Another gift was that of $50,000 from Charles F. Brooker, of Ansonia, also for the Medical School.

Ir is now announced that the offer of the opening of the Harvard Medical School will be withdrawn, only one woman having replied, who was regarded as a desirable student.

PROFESSOR WALTER E. CLARK, head of the department of political science in the New York City College, has been elected president of the University of Nevada.

GEORGE F. KAY, B.A., M.A. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Chicago), has been elected dean of the college of liberal arts of the University of Iowa. Dr. Kay will continue to be head of the department of geology in the university, and state geologist of Iowa.

MR. SIMON MARCOVITCH, assistant entomologist for the past three years at the University of Minnesota, has resigned his position to accept the position of head of the department of biology at the National Farm School, Bucks county, Pennsylvania.

EUGENE DEATRICK, Ph.D. (Cornell), has been appointed professor of soils at the Pennsylvania State School of Forestry, Mont Alto, Pa.

MR. HARRY B. Yocoм, who recently received his Ph.D. from the University of California, has been appointed to the professorship of zoology in Washburn College, Topeka, Kansas, to succeed the late Johnathan Risser.

color with the letters of the alphabet. This faculty has been called "Pseudo-chromesthesia," which, I take it, means sensitiveness to false colors. It has been misunderstood by writers, who have imagined that the peculiar individuals having this trait actually see the color on the letter, which is not the fact. It is a mental association, not a false vision. Some have attributed it to a recollection of color blocks from which letters have been learned. To the "pseudochromæsthetic" this explanation is nonsense. It is, however, a fact that the tendency of this association of letters with colors is hereditary, and that it goes with a certain interest in word-using and in the use of color, features capable in each case of development.

When my son Eric was eight years old, no one ever having spoken of it to him before, I asked him what is the color of A? He responded at once that it is red. At that time, 1912, I made out a list of the alphabet with the colors assigned to each. Quite recently (1917) I repeated the question, never having mentioned the matter since. He said at once that A was red and seemed slightly surprised that any one should not see the difference in

innate color between red A and yellow E.

A few changes appeared, however, in his chromatic scale. These seem, however, to indicate vagueness of color, as the same impression might be described as bluish in one case and greenish or gray in another. For the sake of those this note may interest, I append my own chromatic scale which has not changed appreciably since I first thought of it, with those of two former students, the one my own niece, Marjorie Edwards (now Mrs. Frank Blake), and Edith Snow, daughter of the late Dr. Frank Snow, former president of the University of Kansas. DAVID STARR JORDAN

A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION FOR EULER'S DYNAMICAL EQUATIONS

TEACHERS of analytic mechanics may perhaps be interested in a demonstration which I have used for the past two years and which seems to illuminate Euler's equations for the rotation of a rigid body. The experiment is so simple that it has doubtless been used before, but I do not recall ever seeing it described.

GH is an ordinary support rod some 70 cm. long. IJ is a suspending cord. The ring I is set at such a point that when the rod is at rest

>0. If the center of gravity were to stay immediately below the cord we should have L=0 and therefore do/dt < 0. But this

would increase the angle and so throw the center of gravity out from underneath IJ. The weight of the system and the tension in IJ would then supply a positive torque L. It is possible to have this torque of such magnitude as to make do,/dt = 0, in which case the torque is entirely non-momental. The reason for the necessity of this non-momental torque is easily seen by considering an element of the rod near G or H. When the rod is rotating there must act upon this element a centripetal force directed toward the axis IJ. This force is supplied by means of the torque L.

A rotation of sufficient magnitude to make very evidently greater than it is when the system is at rest is easily imparted by hand.

ARTHUR TABER JONES

SMITH COLLEGE

A UNIQUE HORNET'S NEST

In the magazine, The Guide to Nature, Vol. 10, No. 1, June, 1917, Earl A. Newhall, of Shelburne, Mass., under the title "The nest of an unknown hornet," mentions a hornet's nest of peculiar form which he found hanging under the eaves of an old shop. An excellent photograph of this strange nest accompanies the article. Newhall wrote to Dr. L. O. Howard, of the Bureau of Entomology, sending a photograph of the nest. Dr. Howard

states:

I never saw a hornet's nest like the one in the photograph and I have referred your letter to Mr. S. A. Rohwer, of this bureau, who has studied these creatures for many years and he replies as follows: "I have never seen a nest like this before and do not know if it is an abnormal one or not. If possible, I should like to have some of the ma

kers so that it would be possible to determine the species and thus know if it is abnormal habit.

The nest in question consisted of a globular portion which was abruptly contracted below into a long, slender, vertical neck of practically uniform diameter. This slender neck served as the only means of entrance into the structure.

The writer wishes to state that he once found one of these unique nests at Oxford, Mass., many years ago. This nest was kept as a curiosity in the writer's collections for many years and did not fail to excite the wonder and admiration of those who saw it. In size and shape this nest was similar to the one found by Newhall at Shelburne, Mass. Newhall states that he found his specimen under the eaves of a building. As well as the writer can remember, the nest which he found at Oxford, Mass., was suspended from a small branch of a tree not far from the ground. The maker of the nest was never seen. Although the writer has always kept a sharp eye open since for other specimens of this kind, none has ever been seen. It would be of considerable interest to know whether the two unique nests in question really represent abnormal deviations of habit for some well-known species, or the normal habit of nest-construction for a very rare and little known, or even unknown, species. H. A. ALLARD

WASHINGTON, D. C.

SYNCHRONISM IN THE FLASHING OF
FIREFLIES

THE articles on the flashing of fireflies which have appeared from time to time in SCIENCE have aroused my desire to experiment upon the subject. The presence of two individuals of the firefly, Photuris pennsylvanica DeG., in my tent at the University of Michigan Biological Station at Douglas Lake, Mich., on the evening of July 17, 1917, gave me my first opportunity. With the tent dark, I watched the two fireflies for about ten minutes. For a while they flashed alternately, but it soon became apparent that one was flashing a trifle more frequently than the other. Consequently, once in every two and one half to three minutes flashing was simultaneous. Then for

about twenty minutes I experimented with a three-celled vest pocket flashlight with the following results. I could easily get in rhythm with the firefly, but I could not make the firefly change its rhythm and keep with me. Sometimes the fireflies would stop while I was flashing the light and again they would continue to flash after I stopped flashing. At no time could I control their flashings. The flashlight and the two fireflies flashed simultaneously when I synchronized with one of the fireflies until its time interval brought it into coincidence with the other.

On the evenings of July 19 and 25, 1917, I had opportunity to carry the experimentation further on each occasion with a single firefly. The same kind of results were obtained from these experiments. However, I discovered that when I brought the flashlight within 25 centimeters of the firefly it ceased flashing and did not recommence until after I had ceased flashing or until I had moved the flashlight back a meter or more.

On many evenings at the College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines, at Los Baños, I have watched splendid fireflies, of which there are large numbers in the immediate vicinity. I frequently noticed that small trees and shrubs would be more aglow at certain times than at others, but I never happened to observe a time when a small tree or shrub was all alight one instant and dark the next. In my experience there were always some fireflies flashing in the dark" periods. The times of greatest light occurred when the greatest number of varying flashes coincided.

"

From these observations and experiments it seems to me that complete synchronism in the flashing of a group of fireflies is simply a very rare accident, occurring when the flashes of the individuals chance to come at the same time. FRANK C. GATES

CARTHAGE COLLEGE, CARTHAGE, ILL.

UREDINIA of croNARTIUM RIBICOLA ON RIBES STEMS

DURING the past season uredinia of Cronartium ribicola Fischer have been discovered for

the first time on Ribes stems. Three natural stem infections were observed on a plant of Ribes hirtellum Michx. (Grossularia hirtella (Michx.) Spach) growing in a pine woodlot at Kittery Point, Maine. In this same woodlot two other isolated plants of the same species, inoculated with æciospores by applying the moistened æciospores to the unwounded green stems, developed respectively one and seventeen stem infections. Of the seventeen infections some were very evidently natural infections since they occurred at points on the stems where no æciospores had been applied.

Uredinia were produced on some of the stem infections from the middle of June until August 20. The urediniospores which were formed in these sori were apparently normal in every way. In the case of the other stem infections, where no uredinia appeared, study of sectioned material showed an abundance of mycelium and numerous well-formed internal uredinia in the cortex.

The discovery of sporulating uredinia on Ribes stems complicates the already difficult problem of detecting the disease on Ribes. In view of the observations recorded above, it must be concluded that no Ribes from infected regions can be declared absolutely free from the rust even when completely defoliated. Moreover, the presence of the mycelium and internal uredinia in the stem tissue is strong evidence that the disease does in some cases winter over on Ribes.

OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS IN

FOREST PATHOLOGY,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

G. B. POSEY,

G. F. GRAVATT, R. H. COLLEY

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Dioptrographic Tracings in Three Norma of Ninety Australian Aboriginal Crania. By DRS. RICHARD J. A. BERRY and A. W. D. ROBERTSON. Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. VI., 1914.

The volume at hand contains 270 "life-size" tracings of crania of Australian natives. The number of skulls dealt with is ninety, each

one being represented uniformly from the front, side and top. The publication follows one of a similar nature in which tracings were given of 52 Tasmanian skulls, by the same authors, and reviewed by the writer in SCIENCE of December 16, 1910.

As to derivations, the skulls utilized with six exceptions are all from the southeast part of Australia, i. e., from the region south of the Murray River; the six exceptions are from Queensland.

The authors accompany the publication with the statement:

We are solely desirous of making available to our scientific colleagues elsewhere, material of a valuable character, and which is otherwise inaccessible, and which runs the further risk of being lost in the process of time unless so collected. We do not desire to impose our own deductions derived from a study of this material upon those who may hold different opinions from ourselves, and hence we do not incorporate here, nor did we do so with the Tasmanian tracings, the result of our own observations on highly debatable questions, with the material itself. The conclusions which we ourselves drew from the Tasmanian material have been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Volume 31, 1910, and similarly the conclusions which it is our intention to deduce from the present material will be made available elsewhere, and in due course. Thus those who desire to make use of the present material for other purposes will have a free hand both now and for the future.

As in the case of the tracings of the Tasmanian crania, anthropologists are thankful to Drs. Berry and Robertson for their painstaking work; but as the Tasmanian volume so the one at hand presents certain serious deficiencies which are badly felt and which can scarcely be compensated for by any subsequent publication on the series.

In the first place there is no identification and subdivision of the specimens according to sex. They are evidently all of adults, yet even this is not certain. But the most serious deficiency is the omission of all measurements. An illustration without at least two or three of the principal measurements does not convey, a full measure of confidence. It is probable