Clerk, Professor H. S. Jackson and Mr. R. Threlfall (K.B.E.); Dr. Garrett Anderson, Professor H. B. Baker, Mr. L. Bairstow, Professor W. H. Bragg, Professor S. J. Chapman, Mr. W. Duddell, Mr. F. W. Harbord, Professor F. W. Keeble, Dr. Mary A. D. Scharlieb and Professor J. F. Thorpe (C.B.E.); Professor J. C. McLennan (O.B.E.). The following have, among others, been appointed Companions of Honor: The Hon. E. Strutt and Professor Ripper. ACCORDING to the London Times the program for the autumn meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute, held at the Institution of Civil Engineers on September 20 and 21, included the following papers: "Present practise in briquetting of iron ores," by G. Barrett and T. B. Rogerson; "Microstructure of commercially pure iron between Ar, and Ar," by W. J. Brooke and F. F. Hunting; "The influence of heat treatment on the electrical and thermal resistivity and thermo-electric potential of some steels," by E. D. Campbell and W. C. Dowd; "New impact testing experiments," by G. Charpy and A. Cornu-Thénard; "Heat treatment of gray cast iron," by J. E. Hurst; "Effect of mass on heat treatment," by E. F. Law; "Investigation upon a cast of acid openhearth steel," by T. D. Morgans and F. Rogers; "The acid open-hearth process," by F. Rogers; "The Eggertz test for combined carbon in steel," by J. H. Whiteley, and "Failure of boiler plates in service, and investigation of stresses occurring in riveted joints," by E. B. Wolff. THE autumn meeting of the Institute of Metals was held in the rooms of the Chemical Society, London, in Burlington House, on September 19. The papers presented were: "Experiments on the fatigue of brasses," by Dr. B. Parker Haigh; "Hardness and hardening," by Professor T. Turner; "The effects of heat at various temperatures on the rate of softening of cold-rolled aluminium sheet," by Professor H. C. H. Carpenter and L. Taverner; "A comparison screen for brass," by O. W. Ellis; "Further notes on a high temperature thermostat," by J. L. Haughton and D. Hanson; "Principles and methods of a new system of gas-firing," by A. C. Ionides; "Fuel economy in brass-melting furnaces," by L. C. Harvey, with additional notes by H. J. Yates; "The effect of great hydrostatic pressure on the physical properties of metals," by Professor Zay Jeffries, and the " Use of chromic acid and hydrogen peroxide as an etching agent," by S. W. Miller. WE learn from Nature that donations and promises towards the Ramsay Memorial Fund received by the treasurers amount so far to £21,352, including £835 from members of the British Science Guild; £500 from Sir George Beilby, and £100 each from Lord Rosebery, the Company of Clothworkers, and the Salt Union, Ltd. Professor Orme Masson, of the University of Melbourne, has undertaken to act as the representative and corresponding member of the committee for Australia. As already announced, Professor C. Baskerville, of the College of the City of New York, is acting in a similar capacity for the United States. CHARLES LEE CRANDALL, emeritus professor of railway engineering and geodesy in Cornell University, died at his home in Ithaca on August 25, aged sixty-seven years. DR. LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON, professor of surgery in Cornell Medical College, died on September 17, in his seventy-fifth year. MR. WALTER E. ARCHER, known for his work on English sea fisheries, died on August 19 at Sand, Norway, at the age of sixty-two years. MAJOR A. N. LEEDS, the English paleontologist, died on August 25 at the age of seventy years. THE first of the four volumes of the Decennial index to Chemical Abstracts was issued September 20. This first volume, which contains a little over 1,000 pages, is devoted to authors, A to K. The completed index will be virtually a complete record of the world's accomplishments in chemistry during the period 1907 to 1916. THE War Industries Board has requested the subcommittee on fertilizers to make an immediate survey of the nitrate of soda consumption and requirements in the fertilizer industry. Blanks are being mailed to the en 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 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. Yoсoм, 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-chromasthesia," 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 Edith Snow golden plum color lemon yellow drab black pale red pale bluish green arab blue green blue black red aark yellow dark red 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 Now give to the system a right-handed rotation about IJ. We then have W2 > 0 and >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 0 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 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 |