method is shown to be highly empirical, the errors being produced by decomposition of the oxalic acid by the action of the light in the presence of manganese salts. A modified ferrous sulfate method is accurate and is recommended for factory control work. The latter method gives results in close agreement with results obtained by Bunsen's distillation method and a new direct iodimetric method worked out by the author.

Some relations of the effect of over-heating to certain physical and chemical properties of asphalts: A. W. HIXSON and HAROLD E. HANDS. An oil asphaltic cement, a brick filler fluxed with an asphaltic oil residuum and a crude Trinidad asphalt were heated to various temperatures between 163° C. and 350° C. under uniform conditions. Physical and chemical analyses were made on the products of the various heatings. The results show that heating asphalts above certain temperatures change both the physical and chemical properties. The carbene content was not changed materially until the temperature of heating was above 200° C. Above that temperature there was a decided increase in carbenes. The results seem to indicate that carbenes are the result of cracking paraffine and asphaltic hydrocarbons into napthenes and unsaturated hydrocarbons. Moderate heating may so change the nature of the asphalts as to render them more soluble in carbon tetrachloride than in carbon disulphide. Overheating causes marked changes in natural and oil asphalts which render them unfit for many structural purposes. Two hundred and thirty-five degrees Centigrade is probably the maximum temperature to which an asphalt may be heated without permanent injuries to its useful properties and for certain structural purposes they should not be heated above 200° C. It is believed that the fixed carbon content when corrected to the original weight before heating offers a means of tracing the changes in the molecular structure of the hydrocarbons when they are subjected to the influence of heat. There is a close relation between the carbene value and the physical and chemical properties of asphaltic materials. The carbene specification is important for asphaltic materials for construction purposes.

Chemical Industry in Canada: H. E. HOWE. The paper outlined something of the chemical industry in Canada, with special reference to recent important developments and new processes which have been perfected under the stimulating influence of war conditions, but which will become important factors in the chemical business after the

war. It also recounted something of the natural resources of Canada as indicating the raw materials upon which chemical processes and industries may eventually be based, concluding with the statement of the steps that are being taken by private corporations, educational institutions and the government to apply scientific and industrial research looking toward the more economic utilization of natural resources and the establishment of chemical industries to serve a population which will undoubtedly increase at an abnormal rate following the declaration of peace.

The availability of nitrogen in fertilizers. A new method based on the nitrogen rendered watersoluble by incubation with a fertile soil: J. P. SCHROEDER. Theoretical and practical considerations governing the availability of substances for plant nutrition in recent researches dealing with the assimilation of various forms of nitrogen and the merits of various methods for determining availability were discussed. A proposed method consists of incubating a small sample of fertilizer with a 100 gm. portion of fertile soil at 30° C., maintained just below its critical moisture content and determining the total nitrogen that has been converted into the water-soluble form. It differs from the nitrification method and the ammonification method in that it takes into consideration both of those forms of nitrogen; also that in the form of nitrites and soluble protein compounds, all of which are assumed to be available or readily convertible into available form. It makes pos

sible a shorter incubation period than in the nitrification method and the use of the exact ammonia determination instead of the difficult nitrate estimation.

The fertilizer value of city wastes-II., garbage tankage: J. P. SCHROEDER. The origin and composition and principal methods of rendering garbage were briefly outlined. Complete analyses of twenty samples of garbage tankage, representing all the larger garbage reduction plants in operation in this country, show on the average 3.3 per cent. ammonia, 7.84 per cent. bone phosphate and 0.80 per cent. potash, after removal of the oil, which usually amounts to about 12 per cent. Calculations based on these analyses and on figures showing production in cities of 50,000 and over, call attention to the large source of ammonia available. The availability of this ammonia for plant use is shown by experiments with different methods, and the general applicability of the material for fertilizer purposes based on its physical and chemical properties was discussed.

THE FUTURE OF THE SIGMA XI1 IN a few weeks it will be thirty-one years since some students of Cornell University, feeling the injustice of the oldfashioned kind of education that gave all its honors, all its encouragement to the students of the liberal arts, planned an honor society in the sciences. They thought, as most of us now think, that not all of good was confined to Latin and Greek, that there was also merit in the natural sciences, that the student of geology or of engineering was as deserving of honors and of encouragement as the student of the classics. As they walked home from the commencement where the honors of Phi Beta Kappa had been liberally bestowed, they conceived a society that would recognize in an equal way the merits of the bachelor of science. And the Sigma Xi was born.

But higher education in America, as in all nations, has developed much since those days, and that exponent of the liberal education of those days has also changed. The Sigma Xi of 1886 would find little encouragement in most of our universities to-day, and we of the Sigma Xi may justly claim some of the credit for that change. The classical education of fifty years ago has but few proponents to-day, for science is now recognized as an essential part of any liberal education.

Perhaps some of us are claiming too much for science in education; I half believe that we are. When I received my bachelor degree, a good many years ago, my commencement speech was a diatribe on Latin and

1 An address delivered to the initiates of the Yale chapter of the Sigma Xi, April 2, 1917.

Greek, which had exacted a full half of all my college work. But, I have frankly to admit that my debt to them is great, great because the science of those days was not a substitute for them, nor am I fully convinced that it yet is.

The Sigma Xi was founded, we may frankly admit, merely as a rival for the Phi Beta Kappa-perhaps there was a flavor of sour grapes in its origin! Has it justified its past? Is there justification for it to-day, and need for it in the future? Without reservation the answer to all these is yes. But, for the Sigma Xi of 1886 the need was brief. Science has won recognition as an essential part, though not the whole part of any liberal education. There was a time, not so very long ago, when studies of immediate bread-and-butter interest were debarred from the curriculum for the bachelor of arts degree as contaminators of a liberal education. I can remember a long and warm discussion in one of our large universities as to whether the study of human anatomy might safely be substituted for that of cat anatomy; not because the study of man was less worthy than the study of cats, but because the one was pursued for a practical purpose while the other was merely disciplinary. My colleagues of the language side feared that it would be, as indeed it was, a wedge to make education practical as well as cultural. Similar discussions are not often heard now in our faculty meetings. To preserve the degree of bachelor of arts in all its pristine aristocratic purity, the degrees of bachelor of science and of philosophy, and of I know not what else, were widely introduced for the proletariat in science. For a long time they were the penumbra of classical learning, and even yet in some places they have not won their full place in the sun. I hope that the time will soon be here when there shall be no distinctions anywhere between

the student of Greek and the student of botany or chemistry, or of psychology. One is as useful in its way as the others, and has an equal place in liberal education, but not to the exclusion of others. This is now so evident that the statement would be a mere platitude, were it not that the Sigma Xi was founded expressly to help break down the distinction.

The Sigma Xi has long since ceased to look exclusively upon the other side of the Phi Beta Kappa shield. The ideals of our society are not those of its founders thirty years ago, when the simple recognition and encouragement of scientific studies were the most that it could do. Its higher ideal is now, as it has been for years, I can say with your unanimous approbation, the encouragement of productive scientific scholarship. The encouragement of scientific scholarship is but a part of its function. The student who, when he dons for the first time his academic gown, is able to talk learnedly of what his text-books and teachers have taught him about chromosomes, the mutations of Enothera, dominant and recessive characters, the location of Cambrian rocks, the secret history of trilobites and dinosaurs, or the mysteries of ions and organic compounds, is a worthy candidate for membership with us, but he has not justified his right to full fellowship with the Spoudon Xunones until he has given evidence of his ability and desire to use that knowledge for the benefit of science. Our ultimate ideal, then, in a few words, is the encouragement of research. And the student may properly ask, what do you mean by research?

The word is something of a fetish with us. Is counting the number of feathers in a bird's wing, or the hairs in a mosquito's antenna research. Yes, if it leads the student better to understand the structure of all birds and all flies. Otherwise it might

as well be done by a properly constructed machine. We have been told that the mere accumulation of simple scientific facts never makes a leader in science, that, for instance, the collection of birds and bugs and brachiopods and their discrimination into species and subspecies is an inferior kind of research in natural history. But, every scientific man of repute in the past or present has begun in just that way, by the discovery and discrimination of scientific facts, however simple they may appear to others. Lamarck was a mere collector and namer of mollusks; Charles Darwin wasted years of his brilliant life in classifying cirriped crustaceans-I wonder how much those cirripeds had to do with natural selection, and I wonder how many of us would know a cirriped if we should meet one? Agassiz gave years of his life to the collection and study of poissons fossiles, and it requires no more acumen to classify fossil fishes than living bugs, for I have tried both. The collection and discrimination of mosquitoes was once a puerile pursuit. But, had there been no collectors and classifiers of mosquitoes, yellow fever would still be ravaging our seaports, and perhaps the Panama Canal would not now be a reality, and the safety of our nation endangered. Can any one see any possible relation between a mere entomological collector and the destruction of great cities by war? Had not Loewenhoek, in mere curiosity, found those organisms we call bacteria, and others wasted their time in studying and classifying them, there would have been no Pasteur, and antitoxins unknown. Is there no relation between such trivial pursuits, as some of our friends would call them, and typhoid fever?

I say, and say with deep conviction, that the ability displayed in the observation and discrimination of what often appear to us to be trivial things may be as great as that required for the formulation of far

reaching laws in science. reaching laws in science. Even the tyro can draw conclusions, that is, recognize laws, when facts are numerous enough, and the best of us can do nothing without facts. And the discovery of natural laws is sure to come when facts are numerous enough. It is the trained student who anticipates them. How many great discoveries or great inventions have uncontested claimants? Who was the discoverer of electricity, photography, telegraphy, telephony, aviation, or even evolution?

Let us not, then, deride the student because he is doing what we in our conceit think is unimportant. There are fashions in science as in everything else, and we are rather inclined to ridicule him who is not quite up to fashion. Shall we tell the candidate for honors in Sigma Xi that he must be in fashion? That research is research only when it leads to worldly recognition? No, train him aright, and nothing will be too trivial to merit his study. It is not what he does but how he does it that makes the leader in science as in everything else, for there is nothing small in science.

One of our noted chemists, not long ago, I have been told, after the publication of an important paper, when asked by the president of his college of what use his discoveries were to the world, replied that he hoped they had none. We would not wholly agree with him, because the ultimate end of all our research is the benefit of mankind, and there surely must be some practical use of every fact in science. He did emphasize, however, the first essential of every true scientist, the desire to learn new truths for the sake of truth.

Research ability I would define as the ability to observe, to discriminate, and to judge, coupled with an intelligence that is always asking the reason why. Given this ability to observe and to understand, and its possessor has the foundation for success, whether in science, in arts or in the

everyday affairs of life. Every day life is but a continual round of original research for every successful physician, lawyer, statesman or business man. And this is the highest aim of our society, to encourage the training of such students. As teachers our pupils look to us for inspiration and he only can give inspiration who knows the joy of research himself.

As a society for the mere giving of honors for scientific scholarship we have outgrown our past, and indeed that was our function only for a brief time. But we still have a duty to encourage scholarship, for without scholarship there can be no research. It is human nature to seek honors. Scientific men, like all others, from the humblest to the greatest, welcome them, whether it be membership in the Sigma Xi or in the National Academy of Sciences. When honors come as rewards for meritorious work accomplished they cheer and encourage; and they stimulate ourselves and others to higher efforts. We would not, if we could, abolish honors for scholarship from our society, we would not restrict them to accomplished research.

And our colleges and our nation need us for the higher work; never was there greater need for the work we can do, and these dangerous days are impressing us with that need. Until the millenium comes when we shall all live in peace and harmony, and like the dinosaurs grow big, fat and vulnerable and like them become extinct, the nation will need the utmost we can do in science.

Is it merely a coincidence that the life of the Sigma Xi has been nearly synchronous with the marvelous development of science in America? When this society was born there were but a few score of noted research men in science, and but one or two special societies in science. Now we number our alumni by the thousands, active research men by the hundreds, and scientific so

cieties by the score. Then it was necessary for young men who would do things in science to go abroad, and chiefly to Germany, for their training. Who is there now who finds it necessary to go abroad for lack of suitable instruction here? It was not many years ago that I heard the justly famous Dr. Koch, of Germany, say that America was becoming the leader in medical education and that soon it would be necessary for foreign students to come here for their best training. We have been told so many times by our scientific friends abroad that we are precocious but still undeveloped in science that we have been inclined to believe them. But that time has passed. I say, not in boastfulness, but in conscious truth, that to-day America is doing more research work in nearly every branch of pure science than any other nation upon the globe. And the quality of our work suffers not in comparison. I have grown a little weary of the common assumption that we are still looking across the water for our inspiration and guidance in scientific research.

We are doing more work, we are doing quite as good work in pure science, not because we are any abler or better than other people, and especially Germany, but because ours is a democratic nation that gives to every one opportunity and stimulus; because we are less bound by precedent, because the teachers of our colleges and universities are less creatures of control. In Frankfurt-on-the-Main I was told, a few years ago, that the national government would not permit the privately endowed university they were founding there to appoint its own faculty. It reserved the privilege of making every professor a creature of the controlling government. Fancy what our progress would have been in America had a self-perpetuating cabinet of the national government had the power to