DR. ALFRED LACROIX, secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, and professor and curator of the department of mineralogy of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, of Paris, has in preparation a life of the great mineralogist Dolomieu (1750-1801), and is interested in any information leading to the location of manuscripts, letters or signatures of that great scientist. Any letters or signatures of Abbé René Just Haüy are especially desired, and these, or any information relating to them, can be addressed to George F. Kunz, Abbé Haüy Celebration Committee, 405 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

STEPS have been taken to raise a memorial to the late Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson from the women of England. It will be devoted to the endowment of beds in the New Hospital for Women, Euston Road, which she founded in 1866. A sum of over £9,000 has already been received, and a number of women's colleges and schools have undertaken to raise £7,000.

DR. CHARLES PARKER LYMAN, who was fifteen years dean of the Harvard School of Veterinary Medicine, died in Los Angeles, on February 1, aged seventy years.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN MCCREA, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps and the department of pathology of McGill University, has died in France.

THE late Dr. Ludwig Mond undertook to pay £62,000 as an endowment fund for the David Faraday Research Laboratory of the Royal Institution before 1926. His trustees have now anticipated the obligation, and have transferred £66,500 in 5 per cent. war stock to the trustees of the Laboratory.

UNDERGRADUATES between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one in technical colleges may enroll as second class seaman in the Naval Reserve force for future service, according to the announcement of the Bureau of Navigation of the Navy Department. The students will not be called upon for active duty until they have been graduated, except in case of great emergency, which is not now anticipated by naval authorities. No promise is held out that the

recruits will later be commissioned, but upon graduation they will take examinations, and the ratings they make will determine whether their qualifications merit promotion. Navy recruiting officers have been instructed to communicate with technical colleges and universities with a view to enrolling students who are eligible.

THE United States Public Health Service of the Treasury Department has practically completed plans for preventing malaria among soldiers at camps and cantonments during the coming spring and summer. In a zone from one to two miles wide around twenty or more camps in the south every known effective method of eradicating the disease will be employed under the supervision of experts. In the camps themselves the Army authorities will control the disease. At each camp where there is danger of malaria an expert, probably a sanitary engineer, will be in charge of the malaria operations.

SIR A. MOND said, in the House of Commons on February 18, as quoted in Nature, that the Imperial Institute was partly occupied for the sugar rationing purposes of the Ministry. As to the new Science Museum, it was in course of construction, and incomplete. It had been represented that the work of construction ought to be continued during the war, but he was not in a position to complete the construction of museums in existing circumstances. Considerable expense had been incurred in making the finished part of the building suitable for the work now to be done there. seums now wholly or partly occupied by government departments were the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the Wallace Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British

Mu

Museum, of which a small part had been taken

over.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

RICHMOND COLLEGE has received a gift of $60,000 from Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Millhizer, of Richmond, Va. This sum is to be used in the erection of a gymnasium which will be a

memorial to their son, whose death occurred on February 24.

By the will of Mrs. Charlotte M. Fiske, of Boston, public bequests to the amount of $130,000 are made. Tuskegee Normal School, Roanoke College and Bates College receive $5,000 each and Wellesley College receives $10,000 and the residue of the estate.

SENATOR W. C. DENNIS, president of the Halifax Daily Herald, has presented $60,000 to Dalhousie University in memory of his son, Captain Eric Dennis, killed at Vimy Ridge. The gift provides that the university shall found a chair of government and political science.

DR. EDWIN BISSELL HOLT, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University has resigned, his resignation to take place on September 1, 1918.

Ar the University of Chicago Dr. Harvey B. Lemon, instructor in the department of physics, has been promoted to an assistant professorship; and Dr. A. L. Tatum, professor of pharmacology in the University of South Dakota, has been made an assistant professor in pharmacology and physiology.

T. J. MURRY, formerly associate bacteriologist of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station and associate professor of bacteriology at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, has been appointed associate professor of bacteriology at the State College of Washington and bacteriologist of the Washington State Experiment Station.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE NOMENCLATURE OF THERMOMETRIC

SCALES

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Present usage in nomenclature of thermometric scales is a cause of indefiniteness and confusion of ideas, and some revision seems called for. Accordingly, I hope the statement of the case which follows1 will elicit helpful suggestions and tend toward useful results.

The consensus of scientific opinion and practise is all but universally in favor of the

1 See also Monthly Weather Review, Nov., 1917.

familiar Centigrade scale of temperatures by which the temperature of melting ice and of condensing steam, both from water and under a pressure of one standard atmosphere, are designated 0° and 100° respectively. By general consent the value of other temperatures than the two points thus fixed by definition are defined by the normal constant volume hydrogen thermometer of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as realized by certain mercury in glass thermometers. In recent years the scale of temperatures defined by the varying resistance of pure platinum is also accorded the status of a thermometric standard when its thermal coefficient as defined by the Callendar equation is evaluated by observations at the melting and boiling points of pure water, and at the boiling point of sulphur under standard conditions defined to be 444.5° or 444.6° C.

All other thermometric scales that depend on the physical properties of substances may, by definition, be made to coincide at the ice point and the boiling point with the normal scale as above defined, but they will diverge more or less from it and from each other at all other points.

To obviate the difficulty which arises because thermometers of different types and substances inherently disagree except at the fixed points, Lord Kelvin proposed many years ago that temperatures be defined by reference to certain thermodynamic laws. This course furnishes a scale independent of the nature or properties of any particular substance. The resulting scale has been variously named the absolute, the thermodynamic, and more recently in honor of its author, the Kelvin scale. The temperature of melting ice by this scale on the centigrade basis is not as yet accurately known, but it is very nearly 273.13°, and that of the boiling point 373.13°.

Occasions arise with increasing frequency in which meteorologists, physicists, and others in dealing with problems of temperature are required to use an absolute scale or an approximation thereto, and to publish temperature data in those units. It is not convenient, and in many cases not necessary, to adhere

strictly to the true thermodynamic scale. In fact, the general requirements of science are very often largely met by the use of an approximate absolute scale which, for the centigrade system, is defined by the equation

T=273. + to Cent.

The observed quantity, t°, may be referred to the normal hydrogen centigrade scale or be determined by any acceptable thermometric method. This approximate scale is often called the absolute" or the Kelvin scale, perhaps for the sake of brevity or convenience. Of course, no one can disregard the technical differences between the real and false or approximate, absolute scale.

Such a scale differs from the true Kelvin scale, first, because 273° is not the exact value of the ice point on the Kelvin scale; second, because each observed value of t° other than 0° or 100° requires a particular correction to convert it to the corresponding value on the Kelvin scale. These corrections will differ according to the kind of thermometer used in obtaining the value t° and while they are small for temperatures between 0° and 100° they are large at extreme temperatures and are important in all questions involving thermometric precision.

The approximate absolute scale is sufficiently exact for nearly all purposes, it is most convenient in computations and in the publication of results; further, its numerical quantities are strictly homogeneous, and should any necessity arise data published in its units may be readily reduced to the absolute Kelvin scale by simply applying the appropriate correction for the zero point of the scale-about 0.13° C. and the other appropriate correction to reduce the observed temperature, to, to the true thermodynamic temperature. It is thus clear that much confusion and uncertainty of terminology and meaning would be obviated and Kelvin's suggestion properly appreciated if scientists would agree to give the approximate absolute scale a particular name of its own and reserve the name "absolute" for the scale that is truly absolute, viz., Kelvin's absolute thermodynamic scale.

to their present condition of domestication. In the opinion of the present writer, who is now in Peru and who has lately been in Bolivia as well, this argument is of slight, if any, value. From close study of the matter it becomes clear that the llama is only partially domesticated. There are several criteria of domestication: If an animal depends upon a man for its food, if it breeds while in captivity, if it needs to be artificially sheltered from the stress of weather, if it is obedient to the wishes of its owner, it may be said to be domesticated. It is quite certain that by far the greater part of the llama species to-day feed themselves, refuse to breed in captivity (or, at any rate, generally breed when as far as possible from man), and do without shelter. It is true that the llama is more or less obedient to its owner, but it is a docile animal by nature, and, so long as it is not overloaded, it is a ready worker in its own way. Since this is so, it is quite clear that the llama is only partially domesticated, or rather, that it has been partially subjected to the uses of man, and it is certain that its status does not imply any long period of human influence.

And (p. 323):

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture, if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason to doubt that the industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water has been universally adopted in these countries as an individually available, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that class of deadly disease germs which it has been almost impossible to exclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.

These statements would indicate the fol

lowing sequence of events: (1) the pollution of the drinking water, (2) disease arising from this pollution, (3) boiling of the drinking water to prevent disease, (4) addition of tea leaves to mask the insipid taste of the boiled water. While I have no doubt but that the first two items occurred in the order given, I have very grave doubts as to the sequence of the third and fourth items. It is extremely improbable that it was recognized centuries ago that typhoid fever, etc., were disseminated by pollution of the water supply, especially inasmuch as there was no knowledge of microorganisms or of the rôle which they play in disease until the work of Pasteur (1857-1863). Undoubtedly disease with the Chinese, as with every other people, was early regarded as the act of demons or a visitation of the gods.

To my mind, cause and effect were somewhat as follows: (1) The drinking water was undoubtedly polluted and typhoid, cholera, dysentery, etc., were endemic. (2) Certain families or clans found that a pleasing beverage could be made by steeping the leaves of the tea plant in hot water with the result that they drank very little if any of the pol

boiled water hot for making tea. This device and the custom are here centuries old and throughout these countries boiled water, as tea, is the universal drink, adopted no doubt as a preventive measure against typhoid fever and allied diseases.

Their neighbors or neighboring communities observed that these families or clans who drank tea had relatively little disease as compared with the non-tea drinkers and as a result the custom of tea drinking spread

throughout the land not because of the belief that boiled water prevented disease and tea leaves modified the insipid taste of the boiled water, but because the infusion of the tea leaves per se was looked upon as a medicine specific for the prevention of the prevalent diseases.

Ross AIKEN GORTNER

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Applied Psychology. By H. L. HOLLINGWORTH and A. T. POFFENBERGER. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1917. Pp. xiii+ 337.

This book will properly attract many readers who wish to know the significance of the practical movement in psychology. As the first text-book in applied psychology it gives a well-balanced presentation of the aims, methods and scope of this new "type of interest and pursuit." Nowhere else have the results and methods of approach for practical problems been so completely assembled and so well guarded from misuse. Although it does not reach the dignity of a treatise on applied psychology, this admirable book by two members of the department of psychology at Columbia University will be appreciated both by general readers and by those psychologists who wish to vitalize their introductory courses by associating them with student interests. Only a few colleges as yet have offered a course which attempts to cover the broad field of applied psychology, but within a year a professorship in applied psychology has been established, the Journal of Applied Psychology started, and a Division of Applied Psychology under that title organized in an institute of technology. Whether a unit of instruction entitled applied psychology touches too varied interests and affords too meager content will doubtless continue for some time to be a question for each college to decide. It is certainly too early to expect a text to take the place of a teacher.

Besides bringing the results of many scattered researches together, the authors have helped to organize this branch of psychology

by carefully distinguishing and illustrating three main forms of application to practical problems. These three forms include psychological analysis of a situation, carrying over of principles worked out in allied researches, and the adaptation and improvement of technique. With this scientific procedure in the foreground, they have avoided the unpleasant effect on the student of either a very limited technical monograph or of the magazine literature of the prophetic promoter. The first portion of the book summarizes in compact and usable form the psychological work which helps to understand general human efficiency and how to increase it. It includes the influences of heredity, sex and maturity, environmental factors like illumination and ventila

tion, the principles derived from the studies of the learning process, the effects of work and rest, stimulants, etc. The second half of the book sets forth the psychological procedure in those fields of occupational activity in which the applications have been most explicit. These include employment management, the industrial workshop, advertising and salesmanship, law, social work, medicine and education.

The task of guarding the foundations of the new division of their science has not been assumed lightly by the authors. Instead of the usual illustrations from individual cases, which may or may not be exceptions, we find the constant citation of experiments bearing upon a problem with a careful discussion of the sources of error and the dangers of generalization from the particular investigation. Instead of mere psychologizing about work methods we now have much emphasis on the technique under which the conclusions were reached. The teacher of the consulting psychologist must evidently train him in technical methods of research and the interpretation of results. The authors look forward to that day when the engineering type of psychotechnical expert will meet with other specialists to cooperatively attack their joint problems, instead of the make-shift procedure under which the specialist in business, medicine, education, etc., attempts to dabble in psychology or the psychologist to dabble in other specialties.