emergency and deficiency items, which together amount to $91,660, are subtracted, there is left a net appropriation of $743,651 for the year 1917-18.

In addition to the above appropriations the general appropriation bill this year provides a specific item of $42,000 for printing the publications of the College of Agriculture. Heretofore no special appropriation for printing has been made, but the college printing has been paid for out of a lump appropriation known as the legislative printing fund. The printing for the next fiscal year must be limited to the amount of this specific item.

Included in the $743,651 in the general appropriation bill are a number of small items, of which the aggregate sum is $34,000, for new construction and improvements. The largest of these is an appropriation of $12,000 for the addition of a unit to the central heating plant. When this unit is installed the old heating plant in Roberts Hall is to be removed and the boiler room remodeled to provide additional space for the general purposes of the college. An item of $8,000 is included for remodeling this boiler room. To put in additional roads, sidewalks and drains and general improvements to the grounds, $5,000 is provided; for a new piggery with detached pens, $7,000; for a packing shed on the pomology grounds, $1,000, and for small storage houses for the department of plant breeding a small item is included.

AN INSTITUTE OF APPLIED OPTICS FOR
FRANCE

MR. E. S. HODGSON writes in Nature that a scheme is on foot in Paris to establish an Institute of Applied Optics, with the object of securing closer cooperation between theory and practise in the optical trade. It has been suggested, according to an article in La Nature, that the scope of the institute should fall into three sections, viz., (i) a college of optics, providing a thorough theoretical and practical training for opticians, and promoting among its students a taste for optical research; (ii) a central optical laboratory, where tests of glasses and optical instruments would be made for men of science, public bodies and manufac

turers and research work of general interest carried out; and (iii) a special trade school in which the students could obtain a thorough training in the practical branches of the trade.

It is proposed that the institute should publish transactions in a form following, the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde. The students of the college of optics would be recruited from the educated classes-army and navy officers, students or ex-students of the universities and technical colleges, astronomers, illuminating engineers, manufacturers of optical instruments and doctors interested in physiological optics. There would be two distinct branches of instruction, viz., general optics and instrumental optics. The courses would be supplemented by lectures on all modern optical questions. The period of study is suggested as one year.

The central laboratory would serve as a test laboratory for manufacturers of optical instruments and for glass manufacturers, as a practise laboratory for the students, and as a research laboratory for the college staff.

The professional, or trade, school would take young people for three years and give them a thorough training in (i) glass-working, and (ii) construction and fitting up of optical instruments. The scheme has received the favorable consideration of various government departments and of certain scientific and learned societies in Paris; indeed, the publication of the transactions of the institute is already assured. While it would be difficult to install the machinery and plant necessary for the trade section of the institute, it is suggested that the program of the courses should be considered and the principal courses commenced in the school year of 1917-18.

THE CROCKER LAND EXPEDITION DR. HARRISON J. HUNT, a member of the Crocker Land expedition, arrived in Copenhagen on June 2, reporting the expedition still in northern Greenland. Direct news from Donald B. MacMillan, head of the expedition, announcing that he and his companions had only enough supplies to last them until August of this year, has now been received by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, presi

dent of the American Museum of Natural History. Mr. MacMillan reports that both the relief vessels sent to his aid, the George B. Cluett and the Danmark, have failed to reach him and urges that a third be sent, as otherwise the party will be obliged to adopt Eskimo methods and live on the country.

George H. Sherwood, acting chairman of the Crocker Land Committee, composed of representatives of the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Ilinois, announces that the steam sealer Neptune will be sent with all possible dispatch. This third effort to reach the party in the frozen north will cost at least $40,000, provided that the Neptune is able to reach the base at Etah, Greenland, and return by September next. The Committee hopes that in view of the extraordinary expenses it will receive substantial financial aid from the public. From the scientific point of view, the results of the expedition fully justify the heavy cost, it is said, although Crocker Land, which RearAdmiral Peary thought he saw, has proved a land of mirage. Among other things, the party has discovered six new islands and mapped and explored Finlay Island, seen more than sixty years ago by Sir John Franklin, and yet never, so far as is known, actually visited by man.

The Crocker Land Expedition went north in 1913. Doctor Hovey, as chairman of the committee-in-charge of the expedition, left New York in 1915 to carry aid to Mr. MacMillan. He was in charge of the steamer George B. Cluett, which was chartered from the Grenfell Association. The Cluett reached North Star Bay in September, 1915, but, owing to the formation of ice, could not proceed further north. In this emergency Doctor Hovey proceeded a hundred and fifty miles to the headquarters of the expedition at Etah.

Three members of the Crocker Land Expedition managed to reach Holstenberg in south Greenland and from there took ship for Copenhagen. Dr. Hovey remained with the Crocker Land party. In response to an appeal from him, the committee chartered the steamer Danmark from the Greenland Mining

Company and dispatched her north to the relief of the party. The Danmark was reported on August 20 last buffeting the ice in Melville Bay.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. ARTHUR DEAN BEVAN, of Chicago, was elected president of the American Medical Association at the meeting held in New York City last week. The meeting of the association next year will be at Chicago.

In honor of Dr. J. J. Stevenson, emeritus professor of geology in New York University, the faculty club house will be known as Stevenson Hall. One of the residences on the campus has been converted into a faculty club house, the equipping of the building for that purpose being done by the class of 1902.

PROFESSOR JAMES F. KEMP, since 1891 professor of geology in Columbia University, has retired from active service owing to the impairment of his health.

BASE HOSPITAL No. 5, the Harvard Medical School unit, is reported as having arrived in Paris. Major Robert U. Patterson is in command of this unit, of which Dr. Harvey Cushing is director. Professor W. B. Cannon accompanies the unit to make investigations on the cause and treatment of "shock." Mr. McKeen Cattell is assisting him.

DR. LIVINGSTON FARRAND, president of the University of Colorado, will shortly go to France under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation to undertake work for the control of tuberculosis.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY has conferred its doctorate of science on Dr. George E. Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, on Dr. Robert A. Millikan, professor of physics in the University of Chicago, and on Mr. Guglielmo Marconi.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY has conferred the degree of doctor of laws on Dr. Charles S. MacDonald, the alienist, and on Mr. Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company.

DR. RAYMOND DODGE, professor of psychology at Wesleyan University, has been appointed to

the Ernest Kempton Adams research fellowship at Columbia University.

DR. M. C. MERRILL, who has done graduate work at Cornell, Chicago, Harvard and Washington universities, and who has been director of the department of agriculture of the Idaho Technical Institute for the past two years, has been appointed horticulturist at the Utah Agricultural College. He will take up his work at Logan on July 1.

DR. ISADORE DYER, of Tulane University, has received an appointment as major in the Medical Officers' Reserve Corps.

DR. EDWARD R. BALDWIN, director of the Saranac Lake Laboratory, delivered the annual address before the Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Fraternity at Western Reserve Medical School on May 14. The subject was "Latent tuberculosis, its importance in military preparation."

ARNOLD LOCKWOOD FLETCHER, research assistant in geology at Trinity College, Dublin, has been killed in the war.

DR. FELIX LE DANTEC, professor of tropical pathology in the University of Bordeaux, died on June 7.

ACCORDING to Nature progress has been made with the proposal to establish a national memorial to the late Captain F. C. Selous, killed in action while leading his men in an attack on a German post in East Africa early in January last. An influential and representative committee has been formed under the chairmanship of the Rt. Hon. E. E. Montagu, M.P., with Mr. E. North Buxton and the Hon. W. P. Schreiner, C.M.G., as vice-chairmen. Among Among others who have joined the committee are Viscount Buxton, G.C.M.G., the Earl of Coventry, Dr. David (headmaster of Rugby), Lord Desborough, Viscount Grey, Colonel T. Roosevelt, Lieutenant-General J. C. Smuts, and representatives of the Royal Geographical Society, the Zoological Society, the Entomological Society, the British Ornithologists' Union, the Royal Colonial Institute and the British South Africa Company. The committee has decided, with the permission of the trustees of the British Museum, to place a mural tablet in the

Natural History Museum, where many of Selous's finest trophies are exhibited. There is a general desire that some additional form of perpetuating his memory should be established. It is therefore proposed to found a Selous scholarship at Rugby (his old school), for the sons of officers, primarily of those who have fallen in the war.

THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that Major Hugh-Hampton Young, M. R. C., Baltimore, director of the James Buchanan Brady Institute at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, has been selected to head the special mission under the direction of General William C. Gorgas, Washington, D. C., and the Council of National Defense that is to study medical necessities at the battle front, and will have entire charge of the medical care of the American Army in France. Dr. Young has already started on his mission and on his arrival in England will report to Surgeon-General Sir Alfred Keogh. He and his staff will also report on the advisability of establishing in this country a hospital for the care of wounded and disabled American soldiers who may have to be sent home. Dr. Young will be accompanied by Captain Louis C. Lehr, of Georgetown University, Captain Montague L. Boyd, of Emery College, Atlanta, and Lieutenant Howard L. Cecil, of the Brady Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital.

THE British Medical Journal states that Mr. Alfred T. Davies, of the Board of Education, has written under the title "Student Captives" a short account of the British prisoners of war book scheme (educational), whose object is to provide British prisoners of war interned in enemy or neutral countries with educational books. His pamphlet shows how much trouble has been taken by the committee to provide the prisoners with mental interests, and to make suitable provision for their education so as to enable them to redeem the time of their captivity. It includes letters of approval from Lord Crewe and the president of the Board of Education. Letters of inquiry should be addressed to A. T. Davies, Esq., C.B., Board of Educa

tion, Whitehall, London, S.W.L., and the words "Prisoners of War" written in the left-hand top corner.

THE Eugenics Research Association will hold its next annual meeting on June 22 and 23, in conjunction with the annual conference of field workers of the Eugenics Record Office. The sessions of Friday will be held at Cold Spring Harbor and that of Saturday morning at the rooms of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences.

A NEW volume, the seventh, of the exhaustive report on the extensive and valuable phosphate deposits of the Russian Empire, was issued last year. This gives the results of investigations carried on during 1914; since the outbreak of the war the activity in this field has, of course, been almost exclusively productive. A general résumé of the results is given in Russian by the editor, Professor J. Samojloff, in a short prefatory section of 25 pages. This is succeeded by the special reports (in Russian) concerning the following localities: the Sisola and Lusa rivers in the Ustsysolsk district, government of Vologda, by V. G. Chimenkoff (pp. 1-32); the Aktjubinsk district by D. N. Sokoloff (pp. 33-60); the Dmitrovsk district, government of Orloff, by G. S. Burenin (pp. 61-124); the basin of the upper Kama in the Slobodsk district, government of Vjatka, by V. G. Chimenkoff (pp. 125-208); the Roslavl district, government of Smolensk, by A. P. Ivanoff (pp. 209-244); the region of the middle course of the river Zna, government of Tamboff, by A. S. Dobroff (pp. 245-312); the Pavlograd district, government of Ekaterinoslav, and the Isum district, government of Charkoff, by G. F. Mirtchink (pp. 313-327); the environs of Lake Indersk, Lbitchensk district, government of Uralsk, by A. N. Zamatin (pp. 327-332); the north part of the Temir district, government of Uralsk, by A. N. Zamatin and P. M. Vasiljeuskij (pp. 333-372); the northwest part of the government of Kursk, by A. N. and B. N. Semichatoff (pp. 373-456); the region of the lower course of the river Amudarja, by A. D. Archangelskij and B. N. Semichatoff (pp. 457-518); the

Mosalsk, Metchovsk and Jisdra districts, government of Kaluga, by A. P. Ivanoff (pp. 519-546). The book concludes with "Contributions to the Mineralogy of Phosphates," by J. V. Samojloff.

THE heirs of the late R. J. Lechmere Guppy, of the island of Trinidad, who died August 5, 1916, are offering for sale his large collection of shells and his extensive library, gathered during a period of more than fifty years' residence in Trinidad. A detailed manuscript catalogue has been submitted to the Smithsonian Institution with the request that it be open to inspection.

EDUCATIONAL NOTES AND NEWS

ON June 2, Governor Ferguson vetoed the entire biannual appropriation for the maintenance of the main University of Texas at Austin and the medical department at Galveston. The amount involved is about two millions. The governor took this action after he had failed to force the board of regents to dismiss without proper cause the president of the university and several other members of the faculty. Unless some other means of support can be found, this action will force the University of Texas to close its doors for the next two years.

A CHAIR of legislation in the law school of Columbia University has been endowed with the sum of $150,000 by Mr. Joseph P. Chamberlain. Dr. Thomas I. Perkinson has been appointed the first incumbent of the chair.

THE sum of a hundred thousand dollars has been bequeathed to the University College of South Wales by the will of the late Dr. William Price.

COLONEL SAMUEL E. GILMAN, a member of the faculty of the West Point Military Academy, has been appointed superintendent to succeed Colonel Biddle, who has been assigned to the command of the Sixth Regiment of Engineers for service in France.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM CHANDLER BAGLEY, Ph.D., director of the school of education of the University of Illinois, has been appointed professor of education in Teachers College, Columbia University.

GEORGES VAN BIESBRECK, of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, has been appointed assistant professor of practical astronomy at the University of Chicago.

PROFESSOR H. L. WHITE, formerly connected with the North Dakota Agricultural College, who is spending the present year in graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, has been elected professor of biological chemistry in the college of physicians and surgeons, medical department of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR WILLIAM DRAPER HARKINS has been promoted to an assistant professorship of chemistry in the University of Chicago.

IN the department of anatomy of the college of physicians and surgeons, Columbia University, Dr. Oliver S. Strong and Dr. Vera Danchakoff, have been appointed to be assistant professors.

DR. HARRY CLARK, instructor in physics at Harvard University, has been appointed professor of physics at Victoria College, Wellington, New Zealand.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE CENTRAL ILLINOIS TORNADO OF MAY 26, 1917 A TORNADO crossed Central Illinois from Pike County on the western side of the state almost directly east into Vigo County, Indiana, then bent southeastward into Monroe County, Indiana, on the afternoon of May 26, 1917. The tornado was responsible for the deaths of over 100 people, a large quantity of live stock, and the destruction of farm buildings and other improvements, railroad cars, and portions of a number of towns.

The greatest destruction was wrought in Coles County, Illinois, where it struck the residential districts of the workmen of the cities of Mattoon and Charleston-the former a city of 15,000, and the latter a city of 6,000. The tornado passed through this county between three and four P.M., i. e., that part of the day in which tornadoes are generally most

effective. Sixty people were killed, 500 homes demolished, and others seriously damaged in Mattoon at 3:30 P.M. Travelling at about 45 miles per hour the storm struck Charleston, 11 miles east of Mattoon at 3:45. Here, 34 were killed, over 400 homes more or less demolished, 15 industrial establishments partially or wholly destroyed, and two railway stations wiped out.

The track of the storm is about 225 miles long, but the length of the path in which almost complete devastation was wrought is about 40 miles. The width of the storm track varies from one fourth to one half mile, with an average of about one third of a mile. In numerous places minor damages resulted over an area about three fourths of a mile wide to the south of the track. The storm's path indicates that the tornado swerved slightly in some places and in others raised to the extent that serious effects did not result.

Destruction was most complete, in fact entirely complete in a zone from 500 to 700 feet wide to the right of the storm center's track. The parts of the two cities that were in this part of the storm track, with the exception of the heavier industrial buildings of Charleston, were more completely demolished than if a gigantic roller had passed over them, for the buildings were broken into short sticks, split into narrow pieces, and some parts carried rods and even miles eastward. Inspection shows three zones of variable destruction: First, the one of complete devastation; second, a zone from 300 to 500 feet wide to the left of the storm center's track and a similar one of similar width to the right of the devastated zone, where buildings are demolished beyond repair but not razed; and third, a zone still further to the right of the center where damages decrease outward from buildings moved to lifted roofs, fallen chimneys, and broken windows. Objects to the right of the center were moved forward and in, while objects to the left of the center were moved backward and in. Trees which were probably near the center were felled either north or south.

The reason for the location of the area of