come under observation. A committee of French citizens has also been organized in close cooperation with the government, and appeals have been made to us on behalf of the work undertaken by this committee.

In response to the appeals we have received, our representatives have made a careful preliminary study of the situation, and the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation have been so impressed with the gravity of the need that they have decided to take steps to ascertain definitely the lines along which American sympathy and generosity can be made most effective. With this end in view, they have sought to find the man who in all the country was best qualified both as a physician and as a public health administrator to study the situation in France and to determine the lines along which help could best be given.

They have had no difficulty in making up their minds that Dr. Herman M. Biggs was the man whose character and attainments best fulfilled the requirements of the case. They realized that it would be asking a great deal of Dr. Biggs to make the sacrifice involved in a visit to France, and that the state of New York had the first claim on his services. They felt, however, that if it should be the happy result of Dr. Biggs's going to France that the benefits of his long and wonderfully fruitful service in New York could be availed of in the organization of the campaign in that country, the effect in terms of human welfare would be so large and far-reaching as to constitute a very strong claim both on his public spirit and upon the generosity of the state of New York.

During Dr. Biggs's absence Dr. Linsly R. Williams, deputy commissioner, will be acting commissioner; Dr. Matthias Nicoll, Jr., now secretary of the board, will be acting deputy commissioner, and Dr. John A. Smith, at present sanitary supervisor, will act as secretary.

THE NATIONAL PARKS CONFERENCE

UNDER the auspices of the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior there was held in the auditorium of the New National Museum, Washington, D. C., on January 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1917, a National Parks Conference, at which many important papers and lectures were presented. The program included:

Our National Parks: Franklin K. Lane, secretary of the interior; Senator Reed Smoot, of

Utah; Representative Scott Ferris, of Oklahoma; Representative Irvine L. Lenroot, of Wisconsin; Carl Vrooman, assistant secretary of agriculture; Enos Mills.

Canadian National Parks: J. B. Harkin, commissioner of Dominion Parks, department of the interior, Canada.

The Public and the National Parks: Huston Thompson, Jr., assistant attorney general.

University Classes in the National Parks: Professor E. M. Lehnerts, of the University of Minnesota.

Public Schools and the National Parks: Philander P. Claxton, U. S. Commissioner of Education.

National Parks as a Scientific Asset: Dr. Charles D. Walcott, secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Teaching by Picture: Gilbert H. Grosvenor, editor, National Geographic Magazine.

The Painter and the National Parks: William H. Holmes, head curator, National Gallery of Art. The Photographer and the National Parks: Fred H. Kiser.

National Forests and National Parks in Wild Life Conservation: Henry S. Graves, forester and chief, Forest Service.

The Yellowstone Elk Herds: E. W. Nelson, chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey.

Future of the Antelope: E. Lester Jones, superintendent, Coast and Geodetic Survey.

National Monuments as Wild Animal Sanctuaries: T. S. Palmer, assistant in charge of Game Preservation, Bureau of Biological Survey.

Colossus of Canyons: Representative Simeon D. Fess, of Ohio.

The Survey's Contribution to the National Park Movement: Dr. George Otis Smith, director, U. S. Geological Survey.

The Problem of the Greater Sequoia: Representative Frederick H. Gillett, of Massachusetts. Perhaps Our Greatest National Park: Enos Mills.

The Tehipite Valley and Kings Canyon: Robert Sterling Yard.

The Top of America-Mount Whitney: Emerson Hough.

A FRENCH NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY

THE question of national laboratories of scientific research has been brought forward recently in France. In the Comptes rendus of the Academy of Sciences for November 13, as summarized in Nature, is a preliminary

report by a committee composed of MM. Jordan, Lippmann, Emile Picard, d'Arsonval, Haller, A. Lacroix, Tisserand and Le Chatelier on this question. It is pointed out that all the great industrial nations possess national laboratories of scientific research, systematically directed towards the study of technical problems. The National Physical Laboratory in England, the Bureau of Standards and the Carnegie Institution in the United States, the Physikalische Reichsanstalt and the institutes founded by the Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Germany are given as examples. France has no corresponding institution, and after a full discussion of the questions of control, staff, and work to be done, the following resolution was unanimously carried:

The Academy of Sciences, convinced of the necessity of organizing in France, in a systematic manner, certain scientific researches, expresses its wish that a National Physical Laboratory should be started, for the prosecution of scientific researches useful to the progress of industry. As in other countries, this laboratory would be placed under the control and direction of the Academy of Sciences.

On November 27 this question was further considered by the academy, and it was suggested that the general direction of the laboratory should be entrusted to a council, one half of the members to be nominated by the academy, one quarter representatives of the state departments, and the remaining quarter delegated by the principal industrial interests. Certain existing state laboratories might be affiliated to the national laboratory. A considerable grant for establishment and maintenance will be necessary.

DEDICATION OF THE NEW YORK STATE

MUSEUM

ALTHOUGH the New York State Museum at Albany has been open to the public for some months past, it seemed wise to the regents of the university to bring the public into closer touch with the new museum by formal dedicatory exercises. These took place in the chancellors' hall of the education building at Albany on the afternoon and evening of Friday, December 29. The afternoon exercises consisted of a series of addresses from eminent

speakers, each representing a special phase of community interest in the museum. The Honorable Charles B. Alexander, chairman of the regents committee of the State Museum, presided, and the speakers were President John H. Finley on behalf of the university and the educational system of the state; Senator Henry M. Sage on behalf of the state government; Doctor Francis Lynde Stetson on behalf of the people; the Honorable Charles D. Walcott, speaking as a representative of science in its broadest sense, and Director John M. Clarke on behalf of the museum.

In the evening the principal address was by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who spoke under the title "Productive Scientific Scholarship," and gave an interesting speech to a large audience. Colonel Roosevelt was introduced by Governor Charles S. Whitman, who very happily set forth the value of the research work of the scientific corps attached to the museum. The evening exercises were felicitous and successful throughout, and were followed by a reception in the halls of the museum. Colonel Roosevelt's address on this occasion, or the part of it that related especially to his scientific theme, has been already printed in SCIENCE, and all the addresses of the occasion will be published as a bulletin of the university.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

PROFESSOR FRANK D. ADAMS, of McGill University, has been elected president of the Geological Society of America. Dr. Charles P. Berkey, of Columbia University, continues as acting secretary, in the absence in the Arctic regions of Dr. E. O. Hovey.

OFFICERS of the Mathematical Association of America elected at the New York meeting, on December 29, are: President, Florian Cajori, Colorado College; Vice-presidents, Oswald Veblen, Princeton University, and D. N. Lehmer, University of California; Secretary-treasurer, W. D. Cairns, Oberlin College; Members of the Council to serve until January, 1920: E. R. Hedrick, University of Missouri; Helen A. Merrill, Wellesley College; R. E. Moritz, University of Washington; D. E.

Smith, Columbia University; Member of the Council to take the place of Florian Cajori (elected president): E. V. Huntington, Harvard University.

DR. F. W. TAUSSIG, professor of political economy at Harvard University, is reported to have accepted the chairmanship of the tariff commission created by the present congress.

THE title of emeritus professor of physics in the University of London has been conferred by the senate on Dr. F. T. Trouton, who held the Quain chair of physics until 1915.

DR. A. YERSIN, director of the Pasteur Institute of Indo-China, has been awarded the Lasserre prize for the present year for his work on anti-plague serum.

PRIVAT-DOZENT J. KYRLE, of the University of Vienna, has been awarded $200 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to continue his experimental researches on leprosy.

MR. WILLIAM GRUNOW, eighty-seven years old, who was for thirty-six years custodian of the United States Military Academy Observatory at West Point and a skilled instrumentmaker, died on January 5.

A CORRESPONDENT writes that Mr. Orville Wright has moved into his recently completed laboratories at Dayton, Ohio. The death of Wilbur Wright a year ago caused the suspension of work on the problems of aviation for a time. But in November Mr. Wright resumed flying at his aviation field and dropped his experiments only when the winter weather interfered. Mr. Wright states that there are certain experiments having to do with the theoretical side of aeronautics which the Wright brothers had made prior to 1905. They gave up experimentation for flying. One of the experiments with which Orville Wright will busy himself is the wind funnel. He began observing the effect of wind currents on plane surfaces early in the year. As soon as spring comes, Mr. Wright will begin flying again at his aviation field and will continue his experiments in the new laboratories.

PROFESSOR FREDERICK E. BREITHUT, of the department of chemistry of the College of the City of New York, has issued a report to the

New York Section of the American Chemical Society, urging a statistical investigation of the chemists of the United States so that the conditions of employment and opportunities for young men entering the profession may be ascertained. The committee, appointed by Dr. J. Merrit Matthews, chairman of the New York Section, consists of Professor Frederick E. Breithut, chairman; Elwood Henrick, Bernhard C. Hesse and Otto H. Klein.

DR. RICHARD M. PEARCE, the John Herr Musser professor of research medicine in the University of Pennsylvania and adviser in medical education to the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, sails on January 15 for Argentina and Uruguay to study medical conditions in these countries.

A GRANT of $250 has been made by the C. M. Warren Committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Professor E. L. Mark, of Harvard University, for the investigation of certain properties of sea water at the Bermuda Islands.

THE Association of Military Surgeons of the United States has announced the results of the Henry S. Wellcome prize competition. Capt. Mahlon Ashford, of the Army Medical Corps, who wrote on "The Organization of Medical Officers," was awarded a gold medal and $300. A silver medal and $200 was awarded to Assistant Surgeon-General W. C. Rucker, of the Public Health Service, whose essay was entitled: "The Influence of the European War on the Transmission of the infections of Disease."

UNDER the Herter Foundation the faculty of the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College announces five lectures by Professor Archibald B. Macallum, of the University of Toronto, on "The Distribution of Inorganic Compounds in Animal and Vegetable Tissues and the Forces that determine it." These lectures began January 8, at 4 o'clock, at the Carnegie Laboratory, and will continue daily at the same hour.

DR. FOREST RAY MOULTON, professor of astronomy in the University of Chicago, will give in February, five lectures at Western Reserve University on the MacBride Foundation.

WE learn from Nature that a fund is being raised to purchase the very valuable scientific library of the late Professor Silvanus Thompson and to present it to the Institution of Electrical Engineers as a memorial of his life and work, the library to be accessible to the public on the same conditions as the Ronalds Library. Those who wish to subscribe to this fund or to have further information regarding it are requested to communicate with Mr. W. M. Mordey, 82 Victoria Street, London, S.W. A CORRESPONDENT writes: "In the death, on December 2, of Dr. Herbert Armistead Sayre, professor of mathematics and sometime professor of physics at the University of Alabama, there passed a true gentleman, and thousands of his past students will ever keep within their hearts a warm appreciation of his kindly friendliness and sterling worth."

THE death is announced of Mr. William Ellis, F.R.S., in his eighty-ninth year. Mr. Ellis was formerly superintendent of the Magnetical and Meteorological Branch of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He joined the Observatory in 1841, and was attached to the astronomical department until 1874, having during the preceding eighteen years been in charge of the chronometric and electric branch.

DR. RAYMOND TRIPIER, former professor of pathologic anatomy at the Lyons School of Medicine, has died at the age of seventy-eight

years.

WORD has come to this country of the death on the battlefield at Artois, France, on September 15, 1915, of Dr. Bernard Collin, of the staff of the zoological station of the University of Montpelier, situated at Cette. Dr. Collin had made a brilliant record by his researches on the cytology of the Suctoria and was regarded as one of the most promising of the younger protozoologists of France.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE University of Cincinnati has received by the will of Francis H. Baldwin, of Cincinnati, a bequest of approximately $675,000 for the unspecified uses of the university.

JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE at Philadelphia has received a gift of $150,000 from Miss Anna J. Magee to endow the Magee professorship for the practise of medicine and clinical surgery, now held by Professor Thomas McCrae. During the year, the college has received $100,000 from Daniel Baugh to establish the provost professorship of therapeutics, held by Dr. Hobart A. Hare, and an equal sum from friends of the college to endow the Samuel D. Gross professorship of surgery, held by Dr. J. Chalmers Da Costa. It is understood that these gifts are intended to make unnecessary the merging of the Jefferson Medical College with the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania.

THE board of trustees of the Emma Willard School, Troy, N. Y., announces that, continuing her benevolence toward this school and the new Russell Sage College of Practical Arts, Mrs. Russell Sage has given $250,000 toward the advancement of the work of this latter institution, the only requirement being that the money so given should be used the same way as the original gift of a like amount a year ago to establish the college.

FRIENDS of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, have expressed their intention of contributing £100,000 to the funds of the college, subject to a reservation of their right to make proposals to the council as to either the capital or the income.

HAROLD VEATCH BOZELL, E.E., director of the University of Oklahoma Electrical Engineering School, is temporarily serving on the Sheffield Scientific School faculty of Yale University. Dr. Alois Francis Kovarik has been appointed assistant professor of physics in the school.

MR. F. R. GRIFFITH, JR., A.M. of Washington University, who has been research assistant in physiology at Tulane University, has been elected assistant professor of biology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.

DR. H. A. L. FISHER, vice-chancellor of Sheffield University, has been appointed president of the Board of Education in the new British cabinet.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE A CASE OF SYNCHRONIC BEHAVIOR IN PHALANGIDE

A RECENT article in this journal by Wallace Craig on "Synchronism in the Rhythmic

Activities of Animals" recalls to mind an observation that I made near Austin, Texas, in 1909. At the time of the observation I made some field notes from which the following description is taken.

While engaged in hunting various species of rock lizards I located a vast colony of "harvestmen," which I identified as belonging to the genus Liobunum, resting during the day on the under side of an overhanging shelf of rock on a precipitous hillside. In a somewhat circular area of nearly five feet in diameter the harvestmen were packed closely together in almost unbelievable numbers. I estimated that there were between one and two thousand in the colony. When I first saw them they were all hanging from the ceiling, as it were, perfectly motionless, but when I came within about six feet of them they began a curious rhythmic dance. Without changing their foot-holds they raised their bodies up and down at the rate of about three times a second, and, curiously enough, the movement of the entire lot was in the most perfect unison. This performance was kept up for over minute and then stopped gradually as though from exhaustion. I then poked a few of the nearest individuals with a stick and these immediately resumed the rhythmic up-anddown movement, which spread quickly over the whole group, but died down in less than half a minute. When I once more stirred up a few individuals they gave a few rhythmic responses, which stirred the whole colony again, but only slightly. After this a number of individuals began to crawl about and it was no longer possible to stimulate the rhythmic behavior.

a

When the colony was first seen it was noted that the long legs of neighboring individuals were closely interlocked and this mechanism was sufficient to account for the transmission of stimuli from one part of the colony to another. It should be noted especially that the rhythm was not perfectly synchronous at the

beginning, but became so after a few seconds.

Possibly synchronic flashing in fire-flies may be explained as the result of a somewhat similar transmission of stimuli. One flash stimulates others, which at first might lag slightly; but soon a synchronism is built up in a limited region, such as one bush or one tree. Such a synchronism might be transmitted to a whole field.

It would be interesting to know whether any other naturalist has observed the type of behavior herewith described for the Phalangida. H. H. NEWMAN

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

THE SUPPOSED SYNCHRONAL FLASHING OF FIREFLIES

I WAS very much interested in reading the article by H. A. Allard, entitled "The Synchronal Flashing of Fireflies," which appeared in SCIENCE, November 17, 1916. Some twenty years ago I saw, or thought I saw, a synchronal or simultaneous flashing of fireflies (Lampyrida). I could hardly believe my eyes, for such a thing to occur among insects is certainly contrary to all natural laws. However, I soon solved the enigma. The apparent phenomenon was caused by the twitching or sudden lowering and raising of my eyelids. The insects had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Many times in the past twenty years I have proved that my solution was correct.

PHILIP LAURENT

TRIMMED MAGAZINES AND EFFICIENCY

EXPERTS

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: I have been reading your article on page 13 of SCIENCE for January 5 entitled "Science and the Cost of Paper" and am very sorry that the price of paper has increased to such an extent that you have to make a material change in SciENCE. I understand your position and am not objecting the slightest to what you are doing; but I do want to make a protest against this popular efficiency humbug, because it seems to me that people are running the efficiency matter into the ground. It's all nonsense for any efficiency expert to say that the opening