periods of years and which must be continued in order to gain the desired results.

5. As between new investigations which may be expected to yield returns after a long period of years and those which may be expected to produce results in time to serve the immediate needs of the country, preference will be given to the latter.

6. In the latter class are studies-biological, biochemical, physiological and technological relating to the propagation and rearing of fish, the protection of fish, the utilization of fishery products, etc.

7. The bureau is not only utilizing its permanent scientific staff to the fullest extent, but is gladly availing itself of the valuable assistance offered by biologists, physiologists and chemists from various universities.

8. For the immediate present certain economies are being practised. This does not mean a policy of niggardliness; on the contrary, expenditures must in many respects be more liberal than hitherto. It does mean, however, the temporary curtailment or cessation of certain customary activities which can not be continued in a satisfactory manner during the immediate period of necessary readjustment.

More specifically the bureau's plans for scientific work in the near future may be stated as follows:

The marine laboratory at Beaufort, N. C., will not be opened for general investigations during the coming summer. The Woods Hole laboratory, while temporarily closed for general investigations, will have a small special staff for experimental work in the utilization of fishery products. The fish-culture experiment work of the Fairport, Iowa, laboratory bears so directly upon the immediate problems of food supply that the activities of the station will suffer no curtailment, but will be somewhat expanded. In the class of field investigations, some will be continued, some abandoned and some new studies undertaken.

Not as a complete catalogue of investigations provided for, but as illustrating the topics regarded as proper for the bureau's attention at this time, the following may be selected: The relation of fishes to mosquito extermina

tion and to public health; the habits and propagation of salmon in Pacific waters; the natural history, propagation and protection of the blue crab; problems of the oyster industry; experiments in curing fishes; the properties of the roe of certain fishes alleged to be toxic or distasteful; various other investigations relating to the utilization of fishery products; dragon-flies and damsel-flies in relation to the culture of fishes in ponds; aquatic plants in relation to the culture of fishes in ponds; parasites affecting fish culture in ponds, life-histories, and means of control; systematic relations, habits and migrations of salmonoid fishes in the Great Lakes; biological and physical conditions of fish life in enclosed waters; the protection of wood against marine borers; the utilization of marine alge, and the relation of kelp harvesting to the fisheries.

H. M. SMITH,

Commissioner of Fisheries

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 18, 1917

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

CONCERNING THE MANUFACTURE OF PHTHALIC ACID AND PHTHALIC ANHYDRIDE

THE Department of Agriculture announces that the color investigation laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry, of this department, has perfected, on a laboratory scale, a new process for the manufacture of phthalic acid and phthalic anhydride. This process, as carried out in the laboratories, appears so promising that it is thought that some manufacturers of chemicals and dyestuffs in this country may be able to supply their demands for these compounds by this process, provided the process can be reproduced upon a technical scale so as to obtain results commensurate with the laboratory investigations.

With a view to helping the chemical industry of this country, the Department of Agriculture hereby announces that it is ready to assist manufacturers who wish to produce these compounds. The expenses of the technical installation and of the labor and materials necessary will of necessity be borne by the firm, individual, or corporation wishing to manufac

ture the products. The chemists of the color investigation laboratory will assist with expert advice, etc. The department reserves the right to publish all the data obtained from the technical experiments.

Since it seems very desirable that phthalic acid and phthalic anhydride be made available in large quantity in this country at the earliest possible moment, this offer of assistance will not be held open by the department for an indefinite period. D. F. HOUSTON, Secretary

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
WASHINGTON, D. C.,

June 16

THE CROCKER LAND EXPEDITION

DR. HARRISON J. HUNT, Surgeon of the Crocker Land Expedition, arrived in New York on June 20, on the Danish steamer United States and reported the story of his journey by sledge over the young ice of Melville Bay. He said that the other members of the Crocker Land Expedition were in excellent health when he left them, but that, owing to their supplies being very low, it is imperative that relief be sent to them at once. The Committee-in-Charge had sent Captain Robert A. Bartlett to take command of the sealer Neptune, the third relief vessel which has been chartered in behalf of the Crocker Land Expedition.

Doctor Hunt left North Star Bay on December 18, 1916. He was accompanied by another member of the party, W. Elmer Ekblaw.

"The steamship Danmark," said Doctor Hunt, which had been sent by the Committee-in-Charge, was at North Star Bay when I began my journey south. Mr. Donald B. MacMillan, leader of the expedition, Professor Edmund Otis Hovey and Jonathan Small-another member of the party-were at Etah. Their supplies will last until about the 1st of August and the members will then be dependent upon what walrus and caribou meat they could obtain at Etah. They might also get eider-duck eggs. They have very little coffee, sugar and canned fruits and flour was being rationed out. They may get

some supplies from the Danmark by sledging a hundred and fifty miles to her. That vessel is in about six feet of ice and possibly she will be freed about the 1st of August. She has stores but is short of coal. I was glad to hear, on my arrival here, that the Committee has already arranged to send the Neptune, such help as is urgently needed. Another year in the Arctic would prove a great hardship to the members of the Expedition and might result in fatality."

Dr. Hunt and Mr. Ekblaw left North Star Bay with six sledges and were accompanied by five Eskimos. There was deep snow and the weather was generally bad. When they got out on the ice of Melville Bay they found that the winter had been comparatively open and that the ice, which was three inches in thickness and very porous, was continuously bending beneath them. The long sledge journey of fourteen hundred miles, which took from December 18, 1916, until April 16, of

this year, was attended by many perils.

Knud Rasmussen, the Danish explorer, who went part of the way with the scientists, as well as old Eskimos, said that the conditions for sledging were the worst they had ever seen. The later part of the journey was undertaken by Dr. Hunt accompanied only by Eskimos, as Mr. Ekblaw remained at South Upernavik.

Dr. Hunt said that from the scientific point of view the Crocker Land Expedition, which was sent out under the joint auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois, was obtaining excellent results.

Mr. Donald B. MacMillan-the leader of the ex

pedition, has gathered an enormous amount of valuable scientific data. Dr. Hovey, who is probably the best equipped geologist who has ever gone into the Arctic, is in excellent health and spirits and is doing splendid work. He has set up the seismograph at Etah and has arranged to make extensive observations of all kinds.

Captain George B. Comer, the veteran ice-pilot, who was sent north on the first relief expedition, is a man of considerable scientific attainments. When this hale mariner is not engaged in his call

ing he makes researches in archeology. He is now conducting some most important work in the study of the remains of the ancient peoples of the north.

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY AT THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

PROFESSOR G. M. WHIPPLE has leave of absence from the University of Illinois for the first semester of the coming year to serve as professor of applied psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and acting director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.

Professor Walter Dill Scott, who had originally planned to return to Northwestern University for the next semester, has been given further leave of absence and will remain at Carnegie throughout the year.

A. J. Beatty, Ph.D., Illinois, has been appointed research assistant in the Bureau of Salesmanship Research, and is already engaged in a study of methods used in corporation schools for developing salesmen.

Fellowship appointments include the following: N. L. Hoopingarner, University of Texas; Franklyn Meine, University of Chicago; H. G. Kenagy, University of Minnesota; and C. E. Brundage, Tuck School, Dartmouth.

Beardsley Ruml, Ph.D. Chicago, has been appointed instructor in psychology. L. L. Thurstone has been advanced from assistant to instructor. These, together with Professor J. B. Miner, Professor Kate Gordon and Professor W. V. Bingham, head of the department, will be primarily concerned with mental measurements of students and with research and instruction in vocational psychology.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS THE late Mr. W. Hudson Stephens, of Lowville, N. Y., a life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since its eighteenth meeting held in Salem in 1869, by the terms of his will has bequeathed the sum of $5,000 to the association.

DR. JAMES MASON CRAFTS, distinguished for his chemical researches and for a time presi

dent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has died in his sixty-ninth year.

YALE UNIVERSITY has conferred the doctorate of science on Dr. Theobald Smith, director of the department of animal pathology of the Rockefeller Institute, and Sir Ernest Rutherford, director of the physics laboratories of the University of Manchester, former Silliman lecturer at Yale. William T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Park, received the degree of master of arts.

PROFESSOR ROBERT A. MILLIKAN, professor of physics at the University of Chicago, has been made doctor of science by Amherst College. The doctorate of laws was conferred on Nathaniel M. Terry, of the class of 1867, professor of physics and chemistry in the U. S. Naval Academy.

THE degree of doctor of science has been conferred by Dartmouth College on Allen Hazen, the civil engineer of New York City.

BOWDOIN COLLEGE has conferred the doctorate of science on A. H. Sabin (class of '76), consulting chemist of the National Lead Company and lecturer in New York University, and on Dr. F. H. Albee, of the class of '99, the New York surgeon.

PROFESSOR JOHN E. BUCHER, who holds the chair of chemistry at Brown University, has been given the doctorate of science by that institution.

DR. CHAS. H. HERTY, editor of the Journal of Industrial Chemistry, has been given the degree of doctor of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.

THE Société Russe de Minéralogie de Petrograd, which before the revolution carried the title Société Imperiale de Minéralogie de St. Petersbourg, held its centenary jubilee in January, 1917, on which occasion John M. Clarke, of Albany, was elected to honorary membership.

THE forty-six knighthoods conferred on the occasion of King George's fifty-second birthday include Dr. H. P. Waterhouse and Mr. R. Jones, surgeons, and Mr. R. T. Glazebrook, director of the National Physical Laboratory.

ENGINEER REAR-ADMIRAL G. G. GOODWIN, C.B., has been appointed engineer-in-chief of the British fleet in succession to Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir Henry J. Oram, K.C.B., F.R.S.

FORMER and present graduate students of the department of psychology of Cornell University and a number of his more intimate friends among the faculty met with Professor E. B. Titchener in the Psychological Laboratory on the evening of June 22, to celebrate the completion of twenty-five years of his service to Cornell. A volume of "Studies in Psychology," edited by Professors W. B. Pillsbury, J. W. Baird and M. F. Washburn, was presented to him on the occasion. After the presentation, Professor Titchener responded with some reminiscences of the early days of the Cornell Laboratory, and in conclusion announced that he had declined acceptance of the chair of psychology recently tendered him by Harvard University.

IN the annual report of the visitors of the Oxford University Observatory they express their sorrow at the death of the late Professor Esson, who acted as secretary to the visitors during the whole forty-two years of the work of the observatory. Several lectures to military bodies have been given by the director, Professor H. H. Turner, including lectures in France and in the camps on Salisbury Plain.

THE fifteenth annual session of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, as we learn from Nature, will be held at Stellenbosch, from July 2 to 7, under the presidency of Professor J. Orr. The sectional committees and their presidents will be

J. Brümmer; E: Anthropology, Ethnology, Native Education, Philology and Native Sociology, Rev. N. Roberts. The local secretary is Professor B. van der Riet, Victoria College, Stellenbosch.

PROFESSOR HUGO DE VRIES is preparing, as has been noted in SCIENCE, a new experimental garden and laboratory in Lunteren. He has now transplanted to it the young rosettes of his cultures of Enothera. He plans to continue at Lunteren the work which he had been doing at Amsterdam.

THE official duties of Professor Robert A. Millikan, of the department of physics at the University of Chicago, who has been in Washington during the spring quarter as vicechairman of the National Research Council, which is acting in close relations with the Council of National Defense, have delayed the appearance of his new volume on The Electron, but the University of Chicago Press announces its publication early in July.

PROFESSOR CARL E. SEASHORE, of the University of Iowa, is giving courses at the summer school of the University of California. He offers special work on the relation of psychology to music.

PROFESSOR JOHN WEINZIRL, head of the department of bacteriology of the University of Washington, Seattle, has obtained leave of absence for the coming year and will study preventive medicine with Dr. M. J. Rosenau, of the Harvard Medical School.

A PORTRAIT of the late Professor Raphael Meldola is being painted by Mr. Solomon J. Solomon, in order that copies may be presented to the Royal Society and the Institute of Chemistry.

A MEMORIAL tablet to the late Dr. S. Weir Mitchell was unveiled at the recent commencement exercises of the University of Pennsylvania.

THE death on June 22 is announced of Professor Leverett Mears, head of the department of chemistry at Williams College.

DR. JORGEN BRUNCHORST, Norwegian minister at Rome, known for his publications in bot

any and as director of the Bergen Museum, and editor of Naturen, died in Rome on May 20, aged fifty-five years.

The American Medical Journal writes: K. A. H. Mörner, professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Karolinska Medico-Chirurgical Institute of Stockholm, died recently, aged sixty-two. Since 1892 he has been rector of the institute, in which position he participated in drawing up the regulations for the prizes of the Nobel prize committees, and since has been president of the Nobel Medical Committee. Mörner's research and publications in chemistry, especially physiologic chemistry, toxicology and chemical analysis, were notable.

THE United States Civil Service Commission announces an open competitive examination for scientific assistant, for men only, on July 25. Vacancies in the Bureau of Fisheries, at entrance salaries ranging from $900 to $1,400, including a vacancy in the position of fishery expert on the Albatross, at $1,200 a year, will be filled from this examination. Further information may be obtained by addressing the Civil Service Commission, or the Bureau of Fisheries, Washington, D. C.

on an

THE New Jersey State Board of Health on June 7 denied the application of Rutgers College, at New Brunswick, for permission to teach and practise vivisection under a law of the state. The denial was based opinion from the Attorney General's department that the law in question could not be applied to Rutgers. The act was drawn particularly for the Rockefeller Institute. The Attorney General's department held that it applied only to institutions for scientific research and not to educational colleges or schools.

By the will of the late Mr. Washington S. Tyler, of Cleveland, $200,000 is designated for Lakeside Hospital. Half of this is to be used for construction, and the income from the other half for the maintenance of a maternity hospital to be conducted in connection with Lakeside Hospital.

WE learn from Nature that the late Lord Justice Stirling's herbarium, consisting chiefly of about 6,000 varieties of mosses and liverworts from many parts of the world, has been presented by Lady Stirling to the Tunbridge Wells Natural History Society.

AN opportunity for research work in sociology with some time for other graduate work if desired, awaits a suitable applicant at the University of Chicago and for this $1,200 has been set aside for each of the two years it is expected the investigation will require. By this announcement it is hoped to secure some one already specializing in sociology. Inquiry for further details may be addressed to Professor Albion W. Small, University of Chicago, or to Dr. E. R. LeCount, Rush Medical College, Chicago.

THE Weekly Bulletin of the New York department of health has received a condensed report of the vital statistics of the city of Petrograd for the year 1915. The population for that year was 1,850,000. What stands out most prominently in the report is the fact that there were 2,100 more deaths than births reported during the year, thus showing the effect of the war upon the status of the population. The death rate from typhoid fever was over forty (40) per one hundred thousand, as against six (6) for the city of New York during the same period. Four hundred and fifty deaths were reported from smallpox. The death rate for measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria and croup was far above that of the city of New York. Tuberculosis had a death rate double that of New York. Two hundred and fifty, out of every 1,000 born, died during the first year, as compared with 95 in the city of New York.

RECENT accessions to the University of Arizona Museum include ethnological collections as follows: Eighty-five representative Apache baskets from Governor G. W. P. Hunt, Phoenix; 300 representative Pima baskets from Perry M. Williams, Maricopa; 9 representative Paluate baskets; 12 representative Hopi baskets; 10 representative Hopi pottery; native and ceremonial Hopi costumes; native Navajo costumes, by the University of Arizona