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next biennium, and $1,250,000 for the Kansas State Agricultural College. The three normal schools were given approximately $970,000, and the various other schools and sub-experiment stations $242,000. The total appropriation for all designated educational institutions was a little less than four million dollars for the two years beginning July 1, 1917.

THE will of the late William W. Lawrence, president of the National Lead Company, provides that on the death of Mrs. Lawrence a sum of over $200,000 will go to Princeton University.

A BILL has been enacted in New Jersey designating the scientific departments of Rutgers College as the State University of New Jersey. ARRANGEMENTS have been completed between Northwestern University Medical School and the Chicago Fresh Air Hospital for a course of instruction in tuberculosis for the members of the senior class in the medical school. The class is divided into sections, each receiving clinical instruction for a period of four weeks. To meet the increased cost of supplies and to permit an enlargement of educational facilities, tuition in the medical school of George Washington University has been increased from $150 to $175 a year, and in the dental school from $125 to $150, to take effect next fall.

DR. SCOTT NEARING has presented his resignation at Toledo University owing to criticisms made by citizens of the city of his antimilitaristic activities. It will be considered by a committee of the trustees.

IN accordance with the reorganization plan at the Creighton University College of Medicine, the bio-chemical and physiological laboratories have been merged into a single department under the direction of Professor S. Morgulis. Dr. William A. Perlzweig, of the Rockefeller Institute, has been appointed assistant professor of bio-chemistry in the department.

DR. ETHAN A. GRAY, medical superintendent of the Chicago Fresh Air Hospital, has been

appointed assistant professor of medicine in Northwestern University.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE A RELIEF MAP OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Mr. Kinkaid's proposition (SCIENCE, March 9), to construct a relief map of the United States "300 feet square or 600 feet square "would be, judging from my own experience, a pretty costly one. A relief map of the state of New York 35 feet long, east and west, and 26 feet broad, north and south, now in our museum, cost $17,000 to make. Estimating broadly the dimensions, area and cost of a map of the entire United States on the same scale, the map would be 237.5 feet long, and at the same proportion of cost the expense of making it would be $1,045,500. This is on the scale of one mile to the inch. If the scale were one half mile to the inch, the cost would be, in the same proportion, $4,182,000.

And where in Washington or elsewhere would Mr. Kinkaid put such a map of the United States, 600, or even 300 feet long? There is no building large enough to hold it. Buildings 600 feet long and 300 feet wide are not bagatelles. Perhaps one might be built for a million dollars, but it is doubtful.

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Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave-maidens on the pebbles.

Since the actual parchment is said to date from 2500 B.C., and since Ptah-hotep lived about 3500 B.C., this gives us a written mention of the emerald and its occurrence as a placer mineral on a document 4,500 years old, and shows that it was prized as a gem about 5,500 years ago, perhaps 2,500 years before the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" had come into existence, and over 2,300 years before the traditional date of the siege of Troy.

Whether the word here translated emerald is strictly the emerald as we define it I do not know. At any rate such a translation harmonizes with the usual implication that Egypt is the place of earliest recognition of the stone. The Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, says:

Ancients appear to have obtained the emerald from upper Egypt, where it is said to have been worked as early as 1650 B.C.

The document under discussion shows that it was searched for and prized almost 2,000 years before this.

The same publication that contains the "Instruction of Ptah-hotep" contains a short "Instruction of Amenemhê'et" who ruled in Egypt about 2778-2748 B.C. He remarks:

I have made me an house adorned with gold, its ceilings with lapis lazuli. . . .

This document in the part quoted is said not to be so reliable as the preceding one.

Since a geologist would only by accident have this book called to his attention, it seems worth while to quote such ancient-so far as I know the most ancient-references to these minerals. HOMER P. LITTLE

COLBY COLLEGE, WATERVILLE, MAINE

METHYL AND ETHYL ALCOHOL

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: When the Mapp prohibition law, which went into effect in Virginia last November, was before the state legislature we communicated with our representative, asking that the interests of the colleges be safeguarded in respect to the use of alcohol for scientific purposes, but the law as

enacted ignores biological laboratories entirely. We are therefore compelled to seek a substitute for ethyl alcohol, at least until the law can be amended. Hence the following queries:

1. Can methyl alcohol be substituted generally in processes of dehydration without modifying the methods otherwise or without prejudice to the staining or keeping qualities of the preparations?

2. Can methyl alcohol be generally substituted in the formulas for stains, etc.?

3. Are there any special cases in which this substitution may not be made?

4. What kind of methyl alcohol should be used?

The manuals on histological technique give little information on this question, but it may be that someone in "bone dry" territory has found a substitute for ethyl alcohol. If so, there are a number of readers of SCIENCE who would be grateful to hear of it.

J. I. HAMAKER RANDOLPH-MACON WOMANS' COLLEGE, LYNCHBURG, VA.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Institut de France. Académie des Sciences, Annuaire pour 1917, Paris, Gauthier-Villars et Cie. sm. 8vo (17 X 11 X 1.3 centimeters). 315 pp.

The Yearbook of the Académie des Sciences bears but slight trace of the terrible experience through which France is now passing, an experience all well-wishers of our traditional friend trust will have a speedy ending. It is thus a grateful sign that science may pursue her way unperturbed by the conflicts of the hour, and may have nothing to unlearn or to forget when the period of destruction and suffering brought about by an outbreak of man's basest passions shall have at last been brought to a close.

The most attractive part of the Annual for one interested in the history of science is the complete biographical index of all the members and correspondants from 1795 to 1917 (pp. 111-288). In this register of 1,188 names appear all the leaders in French science for the

period mentioned, and a large number of those in foreign lands. The name of one of the greatest men in the world's political history is also to be found here, that of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was elected resident member of the section of mechanical arts in the First Class of the reorganized Institut National, on December 25, 1797 (5th Nivôse An VI.); two years later he became president of this class. It should be borne in mind that this was at the very outset of his career, in the In our year of the first Italian campaign. own day another soldier of France, General Gallieni (died May 27, 1916), who aided greatly in the defense of Paris during the critical first weeks of September, 1914, was a correspondent of the section of geography and navigation.

One of the most interesting figures among the academicians of the past century was the centenarian chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul, born September 1, 1786, elected member of the section of chemistry, August 7, 1826, president of the Académie in 1839 and 1867 and who died in Paris April 9, 1889, aged one hundred and two years, seven months and eight days, his lifetime extending from the reign of Louis XVI. down to the centenary of the French Republic.

The oldest member living at the time the Annuaire went to press was the rural economist Jean Jacques Schlæsing, born in Marseilles, July 9, 1824, and therefore now in his ninety-third year. The Académie counts two other nonogenarians, the rural economist Auguste Chauveau, born November 21, 1827, and the mathematician Charles Wolf, born November 27, 1827; there are a half-dozen octogenarians.

Of the correspondents chosen from 1795 to 1917, eighteen were born in the United States; three of them, the astronomers Edward Charles Pickering and George Ellery Hale, and William Morris Davis, correspondent of the section of Geography and Navigation, are still living.

The organization of the Académie at the present time permits the election of 66 full members (Membres Titulaires), six for each

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The members of the Académie are distributed in eleven sections, the division sciences mathématiques comprising five sections, geometry, mechanics, astronomy, geography and navigation and general physics, the sciences physiques embracing the following six sections: chemistry, mineralogy, botany, rural economy, anatomy and zoology, and medicine and surgery. Each of these eleven sections is restricted to a membership of six, so that a scientific specialist, however great his renown, must await not merely a vacancy in the Académie, but one in the particular section to which he belongs. By this means an equal balance is always maintained and there can be no undue preponderance of any single scientific branch, or of any group of such branches. G. F. K.

THE PINK BOLL WORM

THE newspapers of the country in the last few months have called attention to the fact that a most serious pest of the cotton plant known as the pink boll worm (Gelechia gossypiella Saund.) has been established in northern Mexico through the shipment of several tons of Egyptian cotton seed to that country in 1910. The insect is one which is especially likely to be transported over long distances. It can live for more than a year in stored cotton seed, thus furnishing an opportunity for shipment to the remotest parts of the globe. As a matter of fact it was carried from

India, which was probably its original home, to Egypt about a dozen years ago in cotton seed. The Department of Agriculture has undertaken strenuous measures to prevent the introduction of the pink boll worm from Mexico. The introduction of cotton seed and of baled cotton which often carries scattered seeds has been prohibited, and Congress has made a special appropriation under which very thorough work in enforcing quarantine measures can be done on the Texas border.

It is interesting to note the recent experience of Brazil with the pink boll worm. In 1913 the Brazilian government paid considerable attention to the encouragement of the culture of Egyptian cotton in that country. An agent was sent to Egypt and large quantities of seed were shipped to Brazil. This seed was distributed throughout the republic by a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture. This branch has inspectors in every state capital. Each one of these received quantities of the seed and distributed it free to all applicants. A more thorough method of dissemination of an insect in a new country could hardly be devised. Early in 1914 a careful survey of the cotton belt of Brazil was made by an American who was engaged in the encouragement of cotton culture in the republic. He found no indications of the cotton boll weevil for which he was looking especially or of any other insect pest attacking the seed or bolls. Late in 1916 he made another trip over the same territory and found that the pink boll worm was generally and thoroughly established. In fact the pest was so numerous that the yields of certain fields were reduced by half. Naturally the situation attracted great attention and many suggestions were made about relief measures. Some of the legislators suggested the passage of a law compelling the burning of all cotton fields in Brazil. Of course it is too late to stamp out the insect by any such means, but the whole episode emphasizes enormously the importance of quarantine measures to prevent the introduction of pests which in all probability can never be exterminated when they have once become established. W. D. HUNTER

BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY

SPECIAL ARTICLES

THE EFFECT OF RETARDATION OF GROWTH UPON THE breeding period aND DURATION OF LIFE

OF RATS1

DURING the course of our experiments on nutrition we have had a number of rats which were stunted for various periods of time. With respect to these animals the question has frequently been raised as to whether this retardation of growth tended to prolong their life beyond the average span; that is, whether physiological age is a function of time alone or also of growth. The inquiry then becomes pertinent as to what may be considered the average length of life of a rat.

Donaldson2 states that "a rat three years old may be regarded as corresponding to a man ninety years old." Slonaker3 has reported that one of his rats reached an age of 45 months; and recently one of our rats, although fed on a uniform experimental diet since it was 6 weeks old, reached the age of 40 months

-the longest life yet recorded for our colony. In an attempt to find out how long our rats might be expected to live, we have at various

times set aside a number of stock rats to be

kept under our ordinary laboratory conditions during their entire lifetime. Out of 91 such animals, 17 (19 per cent.) died under one year of age; 48 (53 per cent.) died between one and two years of age; and 26 (29 per cent.) lived more than two years, the oldest one reaching an age of nearly 34 months. From these figures it is evident that less than a third of the rats in our colony may be expected to live to be more than two years old.

Considering the wide variations in the ages of these rats it was thought that possibly a more definite, although an indirect answer to the question of the effect of stunting upon the length of life might be obtained by determining the age to which stunted females remain

1 The expenses of this investigation were shared by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D. C.

2 Donaldson, H. H., "The Rat," Memoirs of the Wistar Institute, No. 6, Philadelphia, 1915.

3 Slonaker, J. R., J. Animal Behavior, 1912, II., 20.

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fertile. According to Donaldson2 the menopause normally occurs at the age of 15 to 18 months, although he reports one female which, mated at the age of 22 months, produced a litter of one. The young was not reared, how

ever.

Four of our stunted females were mated at various times. The results are summarized in tabular form. Data regarding their early stunting and subsequent resumption of growth have been published elsewhere. In every case the female was not remated until some time after the birth of a litter, as the maximum number of broods which she could bear was of much less interest than the final age at which she was capable of producing young. Although none of these rats began breeding until they had reached an age when normal rats are commonly believed to be approaching the menopause, they produced from three to six litters of young and successfully reared all but a few of them. Their young were apparently as vigorous as those born of younger mothers. Hence the menopause has been postponed long beyond the age at which it usually appears. In view of this, and the added fact that less than one third of our stock rats have reached an age of more than two years, whereas all of these stunted females lived longer, it appears as if the preliminary stunting period lengthened the total span of their life.

THOMAS B. OSBORNE,
LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL,
EDNA L. FERRY

CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXP. STATION
AND SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL,

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION
OF AMERICA

THE second annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America was held at Columbia University, New York City, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, December 28-30, 1916, in affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There were 184 persons present at the various meetings, including 141 members of the association. The first meeting was a joint session 4 Osborne, T. B., and Mendel, L. B., J. Biol. Chem., 1915, XXIII., 439; Am. J. Physiol., 1916, XL., 16.

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