vestigations into the mortality of graduates from American colleges for women. Miss Hulst reports that she has completed the mortality rates for graduates from Smith and Vassar and that she has nearly completed the tabulation of the records for Wellesley College. Preliminary results indicate that graduates from women's colleges enjoy extraordinarily low death rates, consistent with their favorable economic and social status. The research was recommended by Dr. Dublin, under whose direction it is being carried on. Medicine Four hundred dollars to Dr. Leslie B. Arey, of the Northwestern University Medical School, in support of his study of the origin, growth and fate of the giant cells, or osteoclasts, usually held responsible for bone dissolution. It has been found that osteoclasts arise chiefly by the fusion of depleted boneformative cells, the osteoblasts; they further increase by taking to themselves osteoblasts and bone cells, but ultimately degenerate and disappear. There is no convincing evidence that osteoclasts are the specific agents of bone resorption. That they are degenerating, fused osteoclasts accords better with the known facts. Education One hundred dollars to Dr. S. A. Courtis, Detroit, Michigan, toward the expenses of securing a comparison based upon a survey of Boston schools in 1845 with present-day schools from Maine to California. JOEL STEBBINS, Secretary SCIENTIFIC EVENTS THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PROFESSOR JOHN PERRY, treasurer of the British Association, made some remarks before an evening discourse on September 11, at the recent Bournemouth meeting of the association which he summarizes for Nature as follows: After paying printing and office expenses, the funds of the British Association are devoted to scientific research. For more than eighty years we have spent more than £1,000 a year on research, long before ordinary people had heard of research. Every year we form many research committees; each of them is formed of the foremost men of science of Great Britain, who receive none of the money themselves, and their accounts for mere outof-pocket expenses are carefully audited. These researches in the past have created some entirely new sciences, have led directly and indirectly to the creation of many new industries, and they have largely produced the world's present natural knowledge. And now to my point. Yesterday a very prominent member of the association asked me about our finances. I had to admit that even before the war we were meeting with difficulties due to the increased cost of printing, and other things, that since the war we have been behindhand to the extent of more than £1,000 every year, and that we have never yet asked for the help of moneyed men. The only gift we have ever received from a moneyed man was a voluntary gift from Sir James Caird, who handed me £11,000 at the Dundee meeting. My questioner said we ought to ask for help, and that he was willing to start a fund with a sum of £1,000. At this moment he does not wish to have his name mentioned. I need not dwell on the importance of our research work, as I feel sure that every person here who has himself done original work shares my opinion that when we limit our expenditure on research, and especially on pure scientific research, we shall begin to be a bankrupt association-bankrupt, that is, morally from the point of view of science, if not actually in the financial sense. The moneyed men of Great Britain are most willing to help any good object when they get proof that it really is a good object. We can not complain of want of their help, for they did not know the facts. At the same time, the treasurer of an association with such a record as ours does not feel happy at the prospect of begging for help. In the two days of the meeting following that on which I made this statement, the fund was raised to a total of £1,475. I intend to publish in due course a list of names of donors and donations. To illustrate by many instances (as I might) our claims as to the importance of our researches would unduly prolong this letter, and any selection of a few examples would be unrepresentative. I will cite a single illustration: The National Physical Laboratory, the scene of researches of which the importance to the nation during the war and earlier can not be overestimated, had its origin (if its antecedents be traced backward) in the Kew Observatory, which was maintained by the British Association from 1842 to 1872, in which period the association spent some £12,000 on its upkeep. THE WORK OF THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON MATHEMATICAL REQUIREMENTS A PRELIMINARY report of "The Reorganization of the First Courses in Secondary School Mathematics" prepared by the subcommittee, which was authorized to publish it was issued on November 25. It is being made the basis of discussion by organizations, committees, local groups, etc., throughout the country. Over 30 such organizations are at present at work on this report. The whole of the meeting of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in the Middle States and Maryland in Philadelphia on November 29 was devoted to the discussion of this report; it had a prominent place on the program of the Central Association of Science and Mathematics Teachers in Chicago on November 28 and 29 and at the meeting of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England in Boston on December 6. Committees representing organizations in the following states are actively cooperating with the National Committee: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, Missouri and Texas. Local groups or clubs are studying the report in Boston, Springfield (Mass.), Providence, New Haven, New York City, Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Columbus (Ohio), Terre Haute, Chicago, St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis and in several smaller cities. Meetings in addition to those previously announced at which the work of the National Committee will be discussed are as follows: Mathematical Association of America in St. Louis, December 29 and in New York, January 2; Ohio State Teachers' Association, Columbus, December 30; Pennsylvania State Educational Association, Philadelphia, December 30; Association of Teachers of Mathematics in the Middle States and Maryland, Southern Section, Baltimore, December 13, Syracuse Section, Syracuse, New York, December 30. The next meeting of the national committee will occur in New York City on December 30. The principal items on the program for this meeting are the consideration of the report on "The Reorganization of the First Courses in Secondary School Mathematics," the report on "The Valid Aims and Purposes of the Study of Mathematics" and the proposed revision of college entrance requirements. The United States Bureau of Education has offered to publish the reports of the National Committee in the form of leaflets or bulletins. A Mathematics Section of the West Virginia State Teachers' Association was organized in Fairmont on November 28. Professor John Eiesland, of the University of West Virginia, was elected chairman of the newly formed Section. Professor C. N. Moore spoke in behalf of the work of the National Committee. CHEMICAL LECTURES AT WEST POINT AND ANNAPOLIS THE American Chemical Society has arranged a series of lectures on the relations of chemistry to problems of interest in cadets of the United States Military and Naval Academies. The lectures to be given at West Point are as follows: Dr. Wm. H. Nichols, New York City. Sulfurie acid, the pig iron of chemistry. January 10, 1920. Dr. Wm. H. Walker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Manufacturing problems of gas warfare. January 17, 1920. Dr. Chas. L. Parsons, 1709 G St., N.W., Washington, D. C. Nitrogen fixation and its relation to warfare. January 24, 1920. Dr. Henry Fay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. The amorphous state in metals. January 31, 1920. Dr. Chas. L. Reese, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del. Explosives. February 7, 1920. The lectures at Annapolis are: Dr. Henry Fay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Iron and steel. November 15, 1919, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. John Johnston, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. The utilization of research. December 13, 1919, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. Arthur D. Little, Charles River Road, Cambridge, Mass. Natural resources in their relation to military supplies. January 17, 1920, to postgraduate student officers. Dr. Wm. H. Nichols, 25 Broad St., New York City. Sulfuric acid, the pig iron of chemistry. February 6, 1920, to midshipmen. Dr. Willis R. Whitney, General Electric Co., Schenectady, N. Y. Industrial research. February 7, 1920, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. W. Lee Lewis, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Organic research in toxic gases. March 6, 1920, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. Chas. L. Reese, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del. Explosives. April 2, 1920, to midshipmen, April 3, 1920, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. Wilder D. Bancroft, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. Organized research. April 30, 1920, to midshipmen, May 1, 1920, to post-graduate student officers. Dr. Wm. H. Walker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Manufacturing problems of gas warfare. May 15, 1920. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS A SECTION of engineering has been established in the National Academy of Sciences and is now constituted as follows: Messrs. H. L. Abbot, J. J. Carty, W. F. Durand, J. R. Freeman, H. M. Howe, F. B, Jewett, G. O. Squier, D. W. Taylor. All members of the sections of physics and chemistry were given an opportunity to remain with the section with which they had been affiliated or to be placed in the section of engineering. AT a recent meeting of the corporation of Yale University it was voted "to extend the sincere congratulations of the corporation to Professor Ernest Brown on the completion of his monumental work on the "Tables of the Motion of the Moon," and to assure him that the university considers the work that he has done on these volumes as among the most important scientific contributions ever made by an officer of Yale University." WE regret to learn that Sir William Osler, regius professor of medicine in Oxford Uni versity, who passed his seventieth birthday anniversary last July, was stricken with pneumonia in November. SIR HENRY A. MIERS, vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, and formerly professor of mineralogy at the University of Oxford, has been elected president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. THE Royal Meteorological Society has awarded the Symons memorial gold medal for 1920 to Professor H. H. Hildebrandsson for distinguished work in connection with meteorological science. DR. A. PIRELLI has been elected president of an Italian Society of Chemical Industry which has been organized at Milan. DR. J. C. MCLENNAN, professor of physics in the University of Toronto, who has since 1917 been engaged in work for the British Admiralty, will shortly return to Toronto. DR. NELSON W. JANNEY, New York City, has been appointed director of the new Memorial Laboratory of the Santa Barbara Hospital, founded by the late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch Potter, for research on metabolistic dis eases. DR. RALPH B. SEEM, Baltimore, assistant superintendent of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, has accepted the position of superintendent of the Billings Memorial Hospital, Chicago. MR. CHESTER G. GILBERT has resigned from the Smithsonian Institution to accept a position on the staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has opened a Washington office in the Munsey Building, with Mr. Gilbert in charge. DR. E. MILLER, associate in chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University, has resigned to take a position with the DuPont Powder Company. MR. W. J. COTTON has resigned from the color laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry to accept a position with the National Aniline and Chemical Company, of Buffalo, New York. WE learn from Nature that Captain P. R. Lowe has been appointed assistant in charge of the bird-room at the Natural History Museum in succession to Mr. W. R. OgilvieGrant. Captain Lowe has for many years devoted himself to ornithological research at the Natural History Museum, the Royal College of Surgeons, and Cambridge University, and has made extensive collections of, and observations on, birds in Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores, the Cape de Verde Islands, the West Indies, Mexico, Florida, the Mediterranean islands and coasts, South Africa and the British Islands. DR. JOSEPH T. SINGEWALD, JR., professor of economic geology at the Johns Hopkins University, has been granted leave of absence to carry on geological investigations in northwestern Peru. He will sail from New Orleans on December 20. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR FREDERICK STARR, of the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Chicago, who is now in Japan on a research expedition, will return to the university in time to give in January a series of illustrated lectures on Mexico. To express the admiration and gratitude in which Dr. George M. Kober is held by his pupils, friends and coworkers, it has been decided to issue as a testimonial to these sentiments an anniversary publication dedicated to him, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, March 28, 1920. George Tully Vaughan has been elected chairman of the organization; Felix Neumann, of the Army Medical Museum, secretary; John Foy Edson, treasurer, and as members of the committee at large, General Robert E. Noble, Drs. Charles D. Walcott, Wilfred M. Barton, J. W. Fewkes, Walter ject of the address will be "Yellow fever." General Gorgas is chairman of the Yellow Fever Commission of the International Health Board, Rockefeller Foundation, and has just returned to the United States from an extensive trip through Central and South America. In his address he will describe the present plans and progress of the work on yellow fever. PROFESSOR WM. E. RITTER, director of Scripps Institution for Biological Research, visited the University of Illinois December 2 and 3. He spoke before the graduate students and faculty on "Research Problems and Facilities of the Scripps Institution." The department of zoology tendered him a dinner at which he led a discussion on marine biology. DR. E. G. CONKLIN, professor of zoology at Princeton University, lectured on December 3 at Mount Holyoke College on "Has human evolution come to an end?" THE Boyle lecture was delivered by Professor A. Keith on November 19, at Oxford University, on "Race and nationality from an anthropological point of view." THE Harveian festival has been celebrated with full honors by the Royal College of Physicians of London, for the first time since 1913. The oration was delivered by Dr. Raymond H. P. Crawford, and dealt with the forerunners of Harvey in antiquity. After the oration the president presented the Baly Medal to Dr. Leonard E. Hill. As a memorial of Professor J. Dejerine, Madame and Mlle. Dejerine have placed a fund at the disposal of the Paris Society of D. Hough, L. O. Howard, Aleš Hrdlička, T. Neurology for research in neurology. Michelson, W. H. Holmes and N. M. Judd. The anniversary publication will be the issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, which will be published in the latter part of March, and will be known as the George M. Kober anniversary number. THE annual Mellon lecture of the Society for Biological Research of the University of Pittsburgh will be delivered by General W. C. Gorgas on the evening of January 8. The sub LOUIS VALENTINE PIRSSON, professor of geology in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, died in New Haven, on December 8, at the age of fifty-nine years. Professor Pirsson had held the chair in physical geology since 1897, and for the same period was associate editor of The American Journal of Science. JOHN TAPAN STODDARD, professor of chemistry at Smith College since 1878, died on December 9. DR. ALLAN MCLANE HAMILTON, at one time professor of mental diseases in the Cornell Medical College, died on November 23, aged seventy-one years. THE death is announced at the age of seventy-eight years of Dr. Walter Knorre, long an astronomer at the Berlin Observatory. DETAILED accounts of the railroad wreck in the Engo forest, Belgian Congo, in which Dr. Joseph R. Armstrong and William Stowell, both of Los Angeles and members of an exploring expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution and the Universal Service motion picture company, were killed have been received from railway headquarters in Rhodesia. The expedition left Sakania, Belgian Congo, for Elizabethville in a special coach attached to a freight train. While the train was stopping for fuel a water truck broke away and crashed into the rear of the train. A CONFERENCE of representatives of the State and Local Academies of the Central States will be held at St. Louis in connection with the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Officers of the academies are requested to meet at the Soldan High School at one thirty on Monday, December 29. Professor H. B. Ward, of the University of Illinois, whose address at St. Louis will be Hotel Statler, will be ready to give further information concerning the conference. THERE will be a joint dinner of members of Section A of the American Association and of the American Mathematical Society on Tuesday, December 30, at 6.30 P.M. in the American Hotel Annex, 6th and Market Sts. The cost per plate will be $1.50. Those who will attend are requested to notify Professor W. H. Roever, Washington University, St. Louis, before December 26. THE twelfth annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers was held in Savannah, Ga., December 3 to 6. A series of papers and addresses devoted particularly to such southern industries as cotton, turpentine and rosin was presented, and excursions to the various chemical industries of Savannah and the vicinity were made. As December 20, 1920, is the centennial of the Academy of Medicine at Paris, a committee of six members was recently appointed to have charge of the celebration of the anniversary. THE Geological Survey of Great Britain and Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, S.W., have been transferred for administrative purposes from the Board of Education to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as from November 1, but correspondence with reference to the work of the Survey should be addressed as hereofore to the director of the survey and museum, Jermyn Street, S.W. THE Agricultural Experiment Station Journal states that an announcement was recently made in the British parliament of a change in policy in 1918 regarding research in entomology and plant pathology through public funds. These subjects were originally allocated to the University of Manchester and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, respectively, with grants from the Development Fund for their support. In 1918, however, the Development Board decided that all research in plant diseases, whether due to insects or fungi, should be concentrated at a single phytopathological institute at Rothamsted, where also the board's scientific advisory staff in the subject would be stationed. Accordingly the staff at Manchester and a portion of the mycological staff at Kew were transferred to Rothamsted. A grant of $5,000, per annum, was however continued to the University of Manchester to maintain certain phases of its entomological work and also to take up work in mycology there. CAPTAIN WILLIAM C. VAN ANTWERP has given $5,000 to the California Academy of Sciences, to meet the cost of one of the large habitat groups of California mammals which the academy is installing in its museum in Golden Gate Park. Captain Van Antwerp recently visited the museum and was so delighted with the beauty of the groups already |