Dr. Dundas Grant, another on the complexity of the chemical elements by Professor Soddy, and one on breathlessness by Mr. J. Barcroft.

A MEMORIAL tablet to the late Sir William Huggins and Lady Huggins, executed by Henry Pegram, has been placed in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, and was unveiled on March 29. The president of the Royal Society and the president of the Royal Astronomical Society were the speakers.

DR. JOHN K. MITCHELL, noted as a neurolo

this year, and it is recommended that boys under military age and men beyond the age and those physically disqualified should be enrolled in the national army for labor and production of food, munitions and supplies. Other recommendations are for creation of an agricultural body under the Council of National Defence to supervise agricultural matters and for the vesting of wide authority in the secretary of agriculture to regulate and standardize food production and distribution. The subcommittees and their chairmen were:

10. He was fifty-seven years old, and was a son of the late Dr. S. Weir Mitchell.

THE death is announced of Professor Angelo Battelli, the distinguished Italian physicist. He was born at Macerata Feltria (Pesaro) in 1862, and held chairs successively at Cagliari, Padua and Pisa. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies.

DR. H. F. E. JUNGERSEN, professor of zoology in the University of Copenhagen and director of the department of vertebrates in the university museum, died on February 6, aged sixty-three years.

J. RIEDINGER, professor of orthopedics at the University of Würzburg, has died at the age of fifty-two years.

THE death is also announced of G. Argento, professor of surgery at the University of Palermo, aged seventy. He took a prominent part in public health matters and the hygiene of the hospitals throughout Sicily.

It is reported from San Antonio that there is widespread infection from hookworm among the troops from Alabama, Mississippi and Texas, but that the disease is now under control.

Ar the recent St. Louis conference of agricultural experts looking to production of greater crops as an emergency measure, it was recommended that the congress appropriate $25,000,000 for use by the Secretary of Agriculture in such a campaign. Because of the world shortage of food, it is scarcely possible that the production of staple crops by the farmers of the United States can be too great

president of Kansas State Agricultural College; Distribution, Clarence Ousley, of Texas; Organization, President W. O. Thompson, of Ohio State Agricultural College; Economy, J. M. Hamilton, of Montana.

THE report of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand, for the year 1916, as abstracted in Nature, records that the council has recognized the importance of furthering the national movement to advance scientific research and extend the application of scientific knowledge. Addresses on "Education and our National Requirements" and "The Importance of Research to Industry and Commerce," by Mr. G. M. Thomson and Professor T. H. Easterfield, respectively, were arranged with these ends in view. In order that matters connected with research and the chemical application of science should be constantly watched, the council set up a special committee, with Dr. C. C. Farr as honorary secretary. The New Zealand Board of Industries, having invited the institute to send delegates to confer with the board on matters affecting post-war reconstruction, the council appointed the president, with Dr. Farr and Dr. Hilgendorf, to act. Application has been made for part of the £250 granted by the government for research; and investigations are being arranged on the phosphate rocks of Canterbury, the deterioration of apples in cold storage and the electrical prevention of frosting in orchards.

MR. CHARLES BAILEY, formerly connected with the firm of Messrs. Ralli Brothers in Manchester, has presented his herbarium of

British and foreign plants to the University of Manchester. The acquisition of this collection added to the existing herbarium of the Manchester Museum, and more particularly to the large and valuable collection of nonEuropean plants presented to the university in 1904 by Mr. Cosmo Melvill when he retired from business in Manchester, places the university among the foremost of British institutions in respect of this necessary instrument of botanical study and research. The comprehensiveness of the collection may be gathered from the fact that the British portion contains no less than 87,000 separate sheets of mounted plants, while the European portion amounts to 295,000 sheets. Mr. Bailey has made generous provision for the cost of transference of his herbarium to Manchester, and also towards the expenses of completing the mounting of the specimens, so that it may be available for study and reference.

ANNOUNCEMENT is made of the establishment for the year 1917-18 in Nela Research Laboratory, National Lamp Works of General Electric Company, of two fellowships in physical research to be known as the "Charles F. Brush Fellowships." One fellowship, extending over the nine-month period of the academic year 1917-18 carries with it an honorarium of $600 and is open to men who have either completed a course of graduate work leading to the doctorate degree or who have had equivalent work, particularly in original research. The other fellowship, extending over the threemonth summer period of 1917, carries with it an honorarium of $200, and is open to men who, having completed their academic work, and having begun to teach, desire to spend a summer in original research in Nela Research Laboratory. These fellowships are offered for the coming year through the generosity of Mr. Brush who desires thereby to stimulate interest in industrial physics and to make it possible for young men to undertake research work in physics in the environment of an industrial plant. The Nela Research Laboratory will provide space and all necessary facilities, and will have general supervision over

the investigations, which must be consistent with the normal activities of the laboratory. Candidates for these fellowships are requested to apply to the director, Nela Research Laboratory, Nela Park, Cleveland, Ohio.

THE State Microscopical Society of Illinois has adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, That the State Microscopical Society of Illinois hereby approve the representations made on its behalf by our Mr. Henry F. Fuller at the federal hearing on the subject of the proposed Dunes Park, on October 20, 1916, stating the attitude of this society in favor of such establishment; and now, since an interested and active opposition to the proposal has been developed in certain quarters from land speculators, be it further

Resolved, That this society most earnestly urge upon the United States Department of the Interior, upon the United States Congress, soon to be in session, and upon the senators and representatives from Illinois and Indiana in particular, the prompt passage of a bill for the establishment of the Sand Dunes region on the southern shores of Lake Michigan as a United States national park; with provision for its proper maintenance, that this rare and wonderful bit of nature so close to the great centers of population may be preserved for our own and coming generations as a place for study and for recreation, a sanctuary of safety for the birds and beasts and insects, the flowers and trees, and all the wild free life of field and brook and forest and beach forever.

ALBERT MCCALLA, Chairman,
HENRY F. FULLER,
LESTER CURTIS, M.D.

THE Ecological Society of America has issued a handbook giving information relative to the scientific activities, travels, field and instrumental experience, laboratory and experimental work, and taxonomic specialties of the 307 members of the society. Copies can be secured by addressing the secretary-treasurer, Dr. Forrest Shreve, Tucson, Arizona.

THE Completed laboratory building and plant houses of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will be dedicated on April 19-21. There were planned formal exercises followed by a reception on Thursday evening, the 19th, sessions for the reading of scientific papers on Friday morning and afternoon, and on Saturday morning;

a popular scientific program on Friday evening, and a conference on Saturday afternoon with teachers in Brooklyn schools to consider how the Botanic Garden may become most useful to the schools in connection with their teaching of botany, nature study and geography. About fifty papers have been offered for the scientific programs. The principal address on Thursday evening was delivered by Professor John M. Coulter.

THE D. O. Mills Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, sent from the Lick Observatory and maintained at Santiago, Chile, for a number of years past by recurring gifts from the late D. O. Mills and Mr. Ogden Mills, is now to be continued for another five years, subscriptions for this purpose of one thousand dollars per annum each having been made for five years by Mr. Ogden Mills, Mr. William H. Crocker, Mr. F. W. Bradley, Mr. A. B. Spreckles and Mrs. William H. Crocker, and of one thousand dollars each for 1917-18 by Mr. W. B. Bourn and Mr. Gordon Blanding.

WE learn from Nature that the agricultural institute of Alnarp proposes to devote a plot of its land and about £4,000 to the erection of a building for studies in heredity, under the direction of H. Nilsson-Ehle, the recently appointed professor at Lund. It will also provide a maintenance grant of £200 per annum. It is felt that such studies are of the greatest importance at this time, when Sweden is thrown on its own resources in the matter of food production, and the institute is convinced that any material sacrifices it may make for this purpose will be more than repaid by the economic results of the research, on which the institute will naturally have the first claim.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE new laboratory for chemistry at the University of Cincinnati was opened on April 7. The ceremonies took place at McMicken Hall, Judge Rufus B. Smith presiding. Mr. Emil Pollak made the formal presentation of the building. Dr. Lauder W. Jones replied on behalf of the department of chemistry, Dr.

John Uri Lloyd on behalf of the American Chemical Society. The main address was made by Dr. Chas. E. Herty, who spoke on "The Swing of the Pendulum in Chemistry." A dinner, arranged by the Cincinnati Section of the American Chemical Society, was given at the Gibson.

THE valuable engineering library of the late Robert Gillhan, of Kansas City, Mo., has been donated by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Albert Marty, to Drury College, Springfield, Mo. Among the collection of books are complete files of the chief engineering journals of America, handsomely bound in three-quarter Russian.

SEVERAL teaching fellowships in anatomy (including histology and embryology) and physiology (including physiological chemistry) have been authorized in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. These fellowships are renewable for a three years' term, with successive annual stipends of $500, $600 and $700, and lead to the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. in the graduate school.

THE trustees of Toledo University in special meeting on April 10 refused to accept the resignation of Professor Scott Nearing, dean of arts and sciences, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania.

THE necessary alterations have been made to enable the department of anatomy at University College, London, to be opened for the reception of women medical students next October.

THE George Washington University Medical Society, composed of the alumni and faculty of the medical school, at a recent meeting elected Dr. W. Ashby Frankland, president; Dr. Coursen B. Conklin, vice-president; Dr. Thomas Miller, secretary, and Dr. Edward G. Seibert, treasurer.

DR. WILLIAM DUANE, physics, and Dr. Walter F. Dearborn, psychology, have been promoted to full professorships in Harvard University.

DONALD FRASER MCLEOD, assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Mis

sisippi during the last four years, has been promoted to be professor of municipal engineering.

MR. D. KEILIN, of Magdalene College, Cambridge, has been appointed assistant to the Quick professor of biology.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE RÔLE OF BOYLE'S LAW IN CLINICAL SPHYGMOMANOMETRY. A REPLY

TO A. M. BLEILE

In a paper read before the American Physiological Society Dr. Bleile1 discusses an application of Boyle's law which I made in developing the theory of the oscillations of pressure produced in the compression chamber of a sphygmomanometer by the arterial pulse.2 My statement of this law, worded so as to fit the conditions obtaining in my experiments, was as follows: "... the rise of pressure determined by the addition of a given volume of incompressible material to a confined, gasfilled space is proportional to the pressure of the gas filling the space." Dr. Bleile illustrates the action of the law by paraphrasing the example in my paper thus:

With a given volume pulse change, if the arm band pressure is at 100 mm., the pulse wave shown by the arm band manometer would be only half as great as it would with the same volume pulse but with the arm band pressure at 200 mm.

He then goes on to say that

upon testing this hypothesis by the help of a suitable physical model it is demonstrated that such is not the case. On the contrary, it is demonstrated that the oscillations of volume occupied by a given mass of gas produce inversely proportional oscillations of absolute pressure. Or, in other words, the absolute pressure of a given mass of gas is inversely proportional to the volume. . . . Therefore, the results of the present work are in harmony with Boyle's law but are contrary to Erlanger's hypothesis.

This statement would lead one to suppose 1"'An Application of Boyle's and Avogadro's Law to the Oscillations of the Manometer in Clinical Measurements of Blood Pressure," Am. Jour. of Physiol., 1917, XLII., 603.

2 "The Mechanism of the Oscillatory Criteria,'' Am. Jour. of Physiol., 1916, XXXIX., 401.

that in my application of Boyle's law I have committed the mistake of making the relation between pressure and volume a direct instead of an inverse one. This, however, is not the case. If my statement of the law is compared with Dr. Bleile's, it will be found that in this respect there is not the slightest difference between them. Thus, to paraphrase my statement so as to make it conform with Dr. Bleile's, "the addition of a given volume of incompressible material" reduces the volume of the given mass of gas; this reduction causes a "rise of pressure," which "is proportional to the (initial) pressure of the gas filling the space." In this statement the relation between volume and pressure (italicized) obviously is an inverse one. What evidently confused Dr. Bleile is the introduction into my statement of the word "proportional" for the purpose of expressing the relation between the initial pressure of the confined gas and the final pressure developed upon reducing its volume. That this relation is correctly expressed can easily be, and has been, confirmed by the use of very simple apparatus.

Having made it clear that there is no discrepancy between my and Dr. Bleile's statements of Boyle's law, I now desire to add that Dr. Bleile is right in criticizing my example of the application of the law. For I inadvertently employed in the example the pressures read directly from the mercury manometer instead of the absolute pressures, though, in the form in which Dr. Bleile repeats it, the example is in perfect accord with Boyle's law, if it is understood that the pressures are absolute. The failure to express the pressure in absolute terms affects, however, only the magnitude of change, not its sign, and therefore does not alter in any material way the development of the theory of the compression oscillations; for my only object in invoking Boyle's law was to show that under the particular set of ideal conditions premised, namely a rigid compression chamber, a compressible transmitting medium and an inextensible artery, the amplitude of the pressure oscillations resulting from the filling and emptying of the artery must increase as the compressing pres

sure increases from the diastolic to close to the systolic level. And it was shown that under approximately this set of conditions such is actually the case (see Figs. 10 and 11).

But even if Boyle's law did (and it actually does not) determine a diminution instead of an increase in the amplitude of oscillations with increasing compressing pressure, the development of the theory of compression oscillations would not have been affected in the least. For in the further development of the theory it is shown (Figs. 12 and 13) that under the influence of additional conditions obtaining in sphygmomanometry the consequences of Boyle's law become relatively so insignificant that the amplitude of oscillations, instead of increasing, as the compressing pressure rises from the diastolic to the systolic level, actually decreases.

JOSEPH ERLANGER WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL, ST. LOUIS, MO.

THE UNIT OF PRESSURE

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: The announcement that the French Meteorological Service has, beginning January 1, 1917, decided to publish atmospheric pressure data in units of force instead of millimeters as heretofore, makes it necessary once more to call attention to the fact that the proper unit for the expression of pressure is not the millibar but the kilobar. The scientific reasons for this have been given elsewhere at length. Another valid reason, however, may be now mentioned.

I

Pres

There has recently been developed a new type of condensation high-vacuum pump. refer to that of Professor Langmuir. sures as low as 10-5 bar have been obtained; and there is little doubt that very much lower pressures can be produced by cooling the bulb to be exhausted, in liquid air, so as to decrease the rate at which gases escape from the walls.

The unit bar is here used (and I believe this is the practise of the General Electric Company and will of course be followed by physicists, chemists and others working on allied problems) in its right sense, namely, the accelerating force of one dyne per square centimeter. This is 10-8 megabar. In the case of

this type of pump we have a pressure of 10-11 megabar or 10-11 standard atmosphere.

The millibar then in daily use becomes what it properly is, 10-3 bar. The European Weather Services trying to express atmospheric pressures in millibars are in error, and the correct values are one million times greater.

Fortunately, it is an easy matter to change mb to kb. And this should be done on all tables, charts, etc., published by European meteorologists. ALEXANDER MOADIE

A RELIEF MAP OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: With reference to the suggestion in SCIENCE of March 9, relative to a large relief map of the United States, may I be allowed to state that this is a matter which I often discussed with the late E. E. Howell, who at one time had it under serious consideration? It was then my view, to which I still adhere, that there was a limit in size for such objects, beyond which nothing was gained. This was particularly impressed upon me some years ago while studying some of the maps of celebrated battlefields in German museums. In these large models, details toward the center, on account of distance from the eye, were as inconspicuous as though on a smaller scale and closer at hand. In short, the effect of the enlarged map was wholly lost owing to the necessary distance of the observer. A small map near at hand would be much less expensive, and fully as satisfactory.

With Dr. Clarke's remarks in SCIENCE for March 23 I fully agree, data not being at hand for anything but the most general topographic features over a large portion of the area of the United States. The plan, as it appears to me, is wholly impracticable. GEORGE P. MERRILL

U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

QUOTATIONS

RESEARCH IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS

AN important report1 in this issue of The Journal shows that of the twenty-six founda

1''Medical Research in Its Relation to Medical Schools.'' A Report by Drs. Frederic S. Lee, Richard M. Pearce and W. B. Cannon, composing