thanks of the Trustees be tendered to the committee in charge and to all the Cornell men who have contributed to the gift for this admirable and appropriate tribute to Professor Church; and, thirdly, that it be referred to the dean of the college of civil engineering to hang the portrait in a suitable place." SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS DR. FRANKLIN P. MALL, professor of anatomy in the Johns Hopkins University and director of the department of embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, died in Baltimore on November 17. THE anniversary address of the New York Academy of Medicine was delivered on November 15 by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, L.L.D., president of the American Museum of National History, on "The origin and nature of life." Ar its meeting held November 14 the Rumford Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences voted the following appropriations: To Professor Raymond T. Birge, of Syracuse University, $150 in aid of his research on the Structure of Series Spectra; to Professor Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University, $250 in aid of the publication of Marie's Tables of Physico-Chemical Data; to Professor Ancel St. John, $500 for the purchase of a refrigerating machine and accessories to be the property of the committee and loaned to Dr. St. John for use in connection with his researches on crystal structure by means of X-Rays. PROFESSOR J. F. KEMP, for many years head of the department of geology in Columbia University, has become associated temporarily with the firm of Hager Bates and Lewis of Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the absence of Whitney Lewis in France. GUSTAVE R. TUSKA, consulting engineer, New York City, formerly chief engineer of the Panama Railroad Company and lecturer in engineering at Columbia University, has been commissioned as major in the Engineer Section of the Officers' Reserve Corps of the United States Army. MAJOR JOHN M. T. FINNEY, M. R. C., U. S. Army, has been appointed director of general surgery with the American Expeditionary Forces in France; Major Hugh H. Young, M. R. C., director of venereal skin and genitourinary surgery, and Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Eiler, M. C., U. S. Army, director of the laboratory service. It is announced that Dr. Hugh Cabot of British Base Hospital No. 22 has been made lieutenant colonel of the Royal English Medical Corps. He has succeeded LieutenantColonel Sir Allan Perry as commanding officer of the hospital. This is in addition to being chief surgeon, which position he has held for some months. DR. A. B. CORDLEY, dean of agriculture and director of the Oregon Experiment Station, has been elected chairman of the State Lime Committee, authorized by the state legislature to build and operate a state-owned lime plant for providing cheap agricultural lime. DR. CAROLINE RUMBOLD, formerly collaborator in forest pathology, Bureau of Plant Industry, has been appointed assistant pathologist in the Office of Sugar Plant Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry. THE sulphur committee of the War Industries Board has recently visited Texas. The committee consists of J. Parke Channing, J. W. Malcolmson, A. B. W. Hodges, P. S. Smith, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and W. O. Hotchkiss of the University of Wisconsin. THE course of popular scientific lectures of the California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, is being continued on Sunday afternoons in the Auditorium of the Museum in Golden Gate Park, as follows: November 18. Professor G. A. Louderback, geology department, University of California, "A geological expedition into the interior of China."' (Illustrated.) November 25. Professor E. C. Franklin, chem istry department, Stanford University, "Liquid air." (With demonstrations.) December 2. Dr. A. A. D'Ancona, member of San Francisco Board of Education, "Circulation of the blood." (Illustrated by motion pictures.) December 9. Miss Alice Eastwood, curator, department of botany, California Academy of Sciences, "Weeds." (Illustrated.) THE series of lectures on heredity presented before the Washington Academy of Sciences and later published in the Journal of the academy has now been reprinted in collected form. The volume contains the following addresses: Dr. W. E. Castle. "The role of selection in heredity." The collected papers bound in buckram in uniformity with the preceding series of lectures on "Nutrition" may be obtained from the treasurer of the academy, Mr. William Bowie, U. S. Coast Survey, Washington, D. C. MR. CARLETON R. BALL, agronomist in charge of Western Wheat Investigations, U. S. Department of Agriculture, delivered a lecture on "The Scope and Problems of Agronomy" before the students in agronomy at the Maryland Agricultural College, on November 8. THE American Phytopathological Society will meet at Pittsburgh, December 28, 1917, to January 3, 1918, in affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There will be joint meetings of the society with Section G of the association and also with the Botanical Society of America. SECTION E-Geology and Geography-of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, will hold meetings at Pittsburgh, Pa., on Friday and Saturday, December 28 and 29, with a session on Monday, December 31, provided enough papers are offered by geologists returning from the meetings of the Geological Society of America in St. Louis to make a Monday session desirable. A symposium upon the topic "Mineral Resources and Chemical Industry," to be held jointly with Section C, is planned for Friday, December 28. The address of the retiring vice-president of Section E, Professor Rollin D. Salisbury, of the University of Chicago, upon The Educational Value of Geology," will be given on Saturday morning, December 29, at 10 o'clock. The meetings of Section E will be presided over by Professor George H. Perkins, of the University of Vermont. Titles of papers to be read before the Section should be in the hands of the secretary, Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin, University of Chicago, before December 15. Members who can only attend a session on Monday, December 31, and who wish to present papers at that time are requested to notify the secretary as soon as pos THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the second American orthopedic contingent, composed of forty-two medical officers under the direction of Major Goldthwaite, has arrived in England. All the officers as well as three of engineering experience commissioned in the sanitary corps are to take charge of the development of curative workshops in the American orthopedic hospitals in France. There are also twelve orthopedic nurses as a nucleus around which a nursing staff is to be developed. All the medical staff except the director are to be distributed temporarily through the British orthopedic centers. Arrangements have been made by which these centers can be used for training Americans in orthopedic work with the idea of providing relief for the large number of medical officers that will be required for this special work. When these men are needed for service in the American hospitals in France, another group will be sent from home to take their place in the British hospitals. The rotation will be continued until the American hospitals are fully staffed. Major Goldthwaite is going on to American headquarters in France to organize the orthopedic hospital with the American Army. BEFORE the Chemical Society, London, the following lectures will be given: December 6, "The Relation between Chemical Constitution and Physiological Action," Dr. F. L. Pyman; February 21, 1918, "Recent Studies on Active Nitrogen," Professor the Hon. R. J. Strutt; April 18, the Hugo Müller lecture, entitled "The Old and the New Mineralogy," Sir Henry A. Miers. DR. RICHARD WEIL, professor of Experimental Medicine in Cornell Medical College, a major in the Medical Reserve Corps and chief of the medical staff of the Base Hospital at Camp Wheeler, Macon, Ga., died of pneumonia on November 19. Nature states that in a private letter Dr. Paul Bertrand announces the death of his father, Professor C. E. Bertrand, the distinguished plant-anatomist and paleobotanist. Dr. Bertrand was professor of botany at Lille, and lived there for the last three years of his life under German rule. Under these difficult conditions, he was still able to carry on both his university courses and his private research, as long as his health permitted. THE death is announced, on October 27, of Mr. Worthington G. Smith, of Dunstable, fellow of the Linnean Society, at eighty-two years of age and on October 24, at fifty-four years of age, of Mr. George T. Holloway, vicepresident of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, known as a consultant metallurgist and assayer. MR. GEORGE CHARLES CRICK, assistant in the geological department of the British Museum, died on October 8, aged sixty-one years. EDUCATIONAL NOTES AND NEWS THE Probate Court has allowed the will of Mrs. Augusta E. Corbin, by the terms of which Boston University receives $555,000. EXTENSIVE additions are to be made to the laboratories of the department of chemistry of the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. Entirely new and complete laboratories will be constructed for quantitative analysis, for or ganic chemistry and for physical chemistry. Material enlargement will be provided for the food analysis and gas analysis laboratories, and new space assigned for lecture room and recitation room needs. The great increase in number of students entering for the course in chemical engineering has demanded these extensions. Work on the new construction will be started in March, 1918, at which time also ground will be broken for four new dormitories. DR. F. L. PICKETT, formerly associate professor of taxonomy and ecology at the State College of Washington, has been made head of the department of botany at that institution to fill the vacancy in the department of botany made by the resignation of Dr. I. D. Cardiff. PROFESSOR WALTER BURTON FORD has been promoted to a professorship of mathematics in the University of Michigan, and James Garret Van Zwaluwenburg to a professorship of roentgenology. MR. GEO. E. CROFOOT has been promoted from instructor in mechanical engineering to assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Towne Scientific School of the University of Pennsylvania. MR. E. G. GAUL, M.Sc., lecturer in bacteriological chemistry at the University of Manchester, has been appointed part-time demonstrator in chemistry in the university department. Mr. G. Hickling, D.Sc., has been appointed reader in paleontology and in the absence of Professor Holland, acting director of the geological laboratories. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE MANUFACTURE OF OPTICAL GLASS IN AMERICA TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: There is an obvious lesson of general interest and of importance in national welfare in the present situation concerning the manufacture of optical glass in this country. That lesson relates in principle to the injury to important manufacturing interests resulting from a large con sumer becoming the sole producer of a material vital to that line of manufacture. When expert scientific knowledge is involved it is well that scientific men be alive to the consequences of certain lines of activity. Four years ago this country imported annually about half a million dollars worth of optical glass, chiefly from Schott in Jena, Mantois in Paris and to some extent from Chance in England. At the outbreak of the war the German supply ceased, while the French and English supplies were limited to that not required for war purposes. Six of the large consumers of optical glass, a government bureau and three glass manufacturers at once started experimental work in this country on the manufacture of optical glass. The entire normal demand for this material is barely sufficient to pay overhead and a modest profit to a single manufacturing concern. But two of these would-be producers have faced the very considerable development expense and brought their production to a factory basis. One of them is a large consumer of optical glass, the other a large manufacturer of plate glass. The situation faced by the independent consumer is a difficult one. He naturally can not depend upon his largest competitor for his raw material. Neither can the plate-glass manufacturer be depended upon as a permanent source of supply since his large orders for his regular product are much more remunerative. The outlook is therefore rather dismal both for the independent consumer and for the future manufacture of optical glass in America. Optical glass manufacture, like so many other industries newly taken over in this country, is extremely sensitive to the favor of the capitalist as well as of the scientific expert and skilled laborer. Optical glass has been successfully made in this country in small experimental batches at various times. for at least thirty years back, but no one would risk the necessary capital in a business with a demand so circumscribed and a margin of profit so limited. At present a concern devoted exclusively to optical glass, booking the A NOTE ON THE "AGE AND AREA" PROFESSOR DEVRIES' 1 recent endorsement of the hypothesis advanced by Willis that the range of any plant, barring barriers, depends upon the age of the species, is a most curious illustration of how uncritical a man becomes who is obsessed with a theory. The Willis hypothesis has already been satisfactorily dealt with by Sinnott2 in the pages of SCIENCE and I wish only to add one or two brief comments. Neither Willis nor DeVries appear to have any knowledge of or interest in the facts of paleontology, certainly the latter, since he is an evolutionist of a sort, might have selected a name for his supposed factor that had not already been used in a perfectly definite way for a process diametrically the opposite of saltation. This has all been well said by former critics and I mention it in the present connection merely as more cloth off the same piece as the adoption of the Willis hypothesis. Regarding barriers, we are familiar with certain gross kinds such as mountain ranges and seas, but who can successfully formulate the interrelations of organisms with one another and with their environment and the less obvious but no less real barriers that result from these correlations? One is reminded of Darwin's classic explanation of the relationship between cats and red clover, in which case spinsters might prove an effective barrier to field mice and offer optimum conditions for the spread of clover. With reference to New Zealand, a philosophic botanist would have to account for very many plant radiations of different ages and from different directions-certainly the 1 SCIENCE, N. S., Vol. 45, pp. 641-642. 2 SCIENCE, N. S., Vol. 46, pp. 457-459. present flora of New Zealand can not legitimately be postulated as having entered that region as a unit at the central point advocated by Willis, nor can the flora of any region as a whole be dated from one period of time or from a single geographical point. Finally the statement that the dying out of species is a rare event is overwhelmingly opposed by all of the facts of paleontology and by all of the facts of history unless its adherents are prepared to accept the Mosaic cosmogony. This comment is as true of vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology as it is of plants. In the case of the last the probability is very great that the present flora of the globe represents a minute fraction of the extinct floras. Pointing in the same direction is the wellauthenticated fact that in all the orders of plants that are prevailingly arborescent the geologic distribution where it is known is found to have been more extensive than the present distribution. The same statement is true of the higher animals and of such invertebrate groups as I am familiar with. So-called monotypic genera, whether plant or animal, at least in the majority of cases, are relicts of a once wider distribution. Among plants this is strikingly true of arborescent forms and needs qualification only in the case of certain mainly herbaceous, relatively modern and prevailingly temperate groups such as the Papilionacea, Labiateæ, Scrophulariaceæ, Plantaginaceæ, Valerianaceæ, etc. EDWARD W. BERRY THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCIENTIFIC BOOKS A Text-book of Sanitary and Applied Chemistry; or, the Chemistry of Water, Air and Food. By E. H. S. BAILEY, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, University of Kansas. Fourth Edition revised. New York, The Macmillan Company. 1917. Cloth. 12mo, xxiv +394 pp. Price $1.60. As Dr. Bailey says in his preface, the object of the book is to furnish a text, for the use of students, upon chemistry as applied to the most important topics having to do with daily life in the household. The opening chapters deal with the Atmosphere, Fuels, Heating and Ventilation, Lighting, Water, Sewage, Textiles, Soap, Disinfectants and Poisons. The second half of the book treats of the chemistry of food. The treatment is naturally descriptive only and does not cover analytical processes. Throughout the text there are distributed 197 well selected experiments which will greatly help to fix important facts in the student's mind. W. P. MASON SPECIAL ARTICLES THE UFFINGTON SHALE OF WEST VIRGINIA AND ITS SUPPOSED MARINE FAUNA1 AT a number of localities in northern West Virginia the Uffington shale of I. C. Whitela lies at the base of the Conemaugh formation, occupying the interval between the Mahoning sandstone above and the Upper Freeport coal of the Allegheny formation below. It is a dark shale, a portion or the whole of which is sandy and bears plant fossils in abundance. It is variable in thickness, forty feet being about the maximum reported, while over much of the area it is lacking altogether, the sandstone being in contact with the coal. The replacement of the shale by the sandstone is clearly the result of erosion as is indicated by the sinuous contact between the two strata, the shale often varying in thickness as much as twenty feet in a distance of a hundred yards. In 1871, John J. Stevenson, in a paper entitled: "A geological examination of Monongalia county, West Virginia," by John J. Stevenson; together with lists of fossils and descriptions of new species, by F. B. Meek," 2 described a "dark colored, fine grained, argillaceous" shale overlying the "Upper Freeport" coal and containing abundant invertebrate fossils. Its thickness is given as 12 feet. It is said to be best exposed in the "bluff bordering the bottoms two or three 1 Published by permission of I. C. White, state geologist of West Virginia. 1a I. C. White, West Virginia Geol. Survey, Vol. II., 1903, p. 323. 2 West Virginia University, Board of Regents, Third Ann. Rept., 1871, for 1870, pp. 41 to 73. |