partment of Industries of the government of India in which chemists, botanists, zoologists, and so on will be formed into distinct, watertight, graded services, each under the control of a departmental head; and (b) decentralization under which the scientific workers at the various universities and research institutes will be given as free a hand as possible. The policy of centralization and the creation of graded scientific services have been strongly advocated by the Indian Industrial Commission, which was presided over by Sir Thomas Holland, formerly director of the Geological Survey of India. It is favored by a number of administrators in India who consider that some measure of official control is necessary for all scientific investigators, and it has also received the support of several of the scientific witnesses examined by the commission. The arguments advanced by Sir Thomas Holland and his supporters in favor of centralized scientific services are set out in detail in Chapter IX. of the Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, published last year. PORTLAND CEMENT IN 1919 PRELIMINARY estimates compiled by the United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, indicate that the production and shipments of Portland cement in 1919 increased 13 and 21 per cent., respectively, over those in 1918 and that the stocks decreased 52 per cent., so that at the end of 1919 less than 5,000,000 barrels of Portland cement was in stock at the mills. The Portland cement industry was set back considerably in 1918, when war restrictions reduced the shipments from the 90,703,474 barrels shipped in 1917 to 70,915,508 barrels, but it is now regaining its lost ground. Early in 1919 the business was even poorer than in 1918, and practically all the increase reported was made during the latter part of 1919, so that 1920 started with favorable prospects for the cement industry. During 1919 the shipments from some mills were limited by the lack of freight cars. The increase in the value of the cement shipped in 1919 over that shipped in 1918 was about 28 per cent. The shipments of Portland cement in 1919 amounted to 85,485,000 barrels, valued at $144,461,000; the production amounted to 80,287,000 barrels; and the stocks at the mills at the end of the year amounted to 4,976,000 barrels. One new plant produced Portland cement in 1919-the Indiana Portland Cement Co., at Greencastle, Ind. The total number of plants that produced cement in 1919 was 110, and the total number of plants that shipped cement was 113. The average factory price per barrel for Portland cement in bulk in individual states in 1919 ranged from $1.57 in Kansas to $2.03 in Utah. The average factory price for the whole country in 1919 was $1.69, an increase of only 6 per cent. over 1918. The exports of hydraulic cement from the United States in 1919 amounted to 2,463,689 barrels, valued at $7,516,019, or $3.05 per barrel, increases of about 9.27 and 16 per cent., respectively, over 1918. THE INVESTIGATION OF FATIGUE PHE- IN 1915 Mr. Ambrose Swasey gave a fund of several hundred thousand dollars, the income of which was to be used "for the advancement of arts and sciences connected with engineering and for the benefit of mankind." The income of this fund has been given in small amounts to various engineering investigations by the Engineering Foundation, which is the body organized to administer the fund. Last spring the governing board of the foundation decided that it would be advisable to give the bulk of the income for the support of one major research, and they asked the National Research Council to recommend some piece of research to. be supported. During the war the National Research Council had organized a committee to study the failure of crank shafts of airplane engines, of welded ship plates, and of other metal parts of machines under the repeated loads applied to them in service. The committee on fatigue phenomena in metals was the title of the committee. Its chairman was Professor H. F. Moore, of the department of theoretical and applied mechanics, of the University of Illinois, and during the war and afterward some small pieces of research work were carried out under the auspices of the committee, mainly in the materials testing laboratory of the college of engineering of the University of Illinois by the chairman of the committee, and by W. J. Putnam, and A. G. Gehrig. The National Research Council recommended that the bulk of the income of the Engineering Foundation be given to the support of an extensive investigation of the resistance of metals to fatigue under repeated loading, and that Professor Moore be asked to take charge of the investigation. Engineering Education, from which these facts are quoted, states that the formal arrangements have been completed for the active prosecution of this work, with headquarters and a laboratory at the University of Illinois. The financial support for the investigation will amount to $30,000, and it is expected to extend over a period of two years. Material for study and apparatus is already arriving, and a room is being fitted up for the installation of the score or more of special testing machines which will be required for the investigation. The investigation is under the joint auspices of the Engineering Foundation, the University of Illinois Engineering Experiment Station, and the National Research Council, the last-named body being represented by an advisory committee of nine members, of which Professor Moore is chairman. In addition to the funds supplied by the Engineering Foundation, the university furnished Professor Moore's services, light, heat, power, a laboratory room, and the use of the standard testing equipment of the materials testing laboratory. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS THE degree of doctor of laws was conferred on Professor Theodore W. Richards, director of the Wolcott Gibbs Laboratory of Harvard University, at the University Day exercises of the University of Pennsylvania. PROFESSOR ANTON J. CARLSON, chairman of the department of physiology at the University of Chicago, has been made an honorary M.D. by the University of Lund, Sweden. Professor Carlson has also been made a corresponding member of the French Biological Society. PROFESSOR J. M. T. FINNEY, of the Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Charles H. Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., have been elected honorary fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. MR. GIFFORD PINCHOT, of Milford, Pa., former chief forester of the United States, has been appointed commissioner of forestry of Pennsylvania by Governor Sproul to succeed Robert S. Conklin, of Columbia, who resigned to become a member of the State Water Supply Commission. DR. HENRY GRAVES, chief of the U. S. Forest Service, and Albert F. Pottee, associate forester, have resigned. PROFESSOR ROBERT B. RIGGS, for thirty-three years professor of chemistry at Trinity College, will retire at the close of the present college year. MR. R. M. BROWN, formerly librarian of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, has accepted an appointment with Rand, McNally and Company, to prepare and edit material for a new edition of their atlas of the world. MR. GEORGE A. RANKIN, formerly with the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, and captain in the Chemical Warfare Service during the war, has joined the staff of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. JULIUS MATZ, formerly with the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station and for the past year assistant plant pathologist at the Insular Experiment Station of Porto Rico, has been appointed chief of the division of botany and plant pathology at the Insular Experiment Station, Rio Piedrus, P. R., beginning on January 1, 1920. MR. PAUL A. MURPHY, field laboratory of plant pathology, Charlottetown, P. E. I., has resigned his position as officer in charge of potato disease investigation under the Dominion Department of Agriculture and will take up work on April 1, as assistant with Dr. Pethybridge in the division of seeds and plant diseases in charge of plant pathological work in Ireland. His new address will be Royal College of Science, Dublin. ASSOCIATE CURATOR W. R. MAXON, of the U. S. National Museum, and his assistant, Mr. Killip, are making the Cinchona Tropical Botanical Station their base during March and April, while carrying on botanical exploration of the northern slopes of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Only small areas of this region have been actually explored by botanists, and it is to be expected that many interesting types of ferns and angiosperms are yet to be discovered in the primeval forest which covers this region. WE learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that Dr. Victor G. Heiser, of the Rockefeller Foundation, has returned to New York after a trip to Porto Rico with Dr. Grant to make a study of sanitary conditions of the island, especially as regards hookworm disease. Dr. Louis Shapiro, of the Rockefeller Institute, is now in Colombia at the request of the Colombian government, making a study of the prevalence of leprosy, malaria and hookworm disease. THE Puget Sound Biological Station will hold its annual session, beginning June 21 and continuing for six weeks with the class work. The station, however, is open several weeks longer. The staff, exclusive of assistants, this year will consist of Dr. B. M. Allen, embryology, University of Kansas; Dr. Nathan Fasten, morphology, University of Washington; Dr. T. C. Frye, director, algæ, University of Washington; Professor F. W. Gail, algæ, University of Idaho; Dr. E. J. Lund, physiology, University of Minnesota; Dr. V. E. Shelford, ecology, University of Illinois, and Professor A. R. Sweetser, plant taxonomy, University of Oregon. PROFESSOR ALBERT M. REESE, of West Virginia University, lectured upon "The Work of the Tropical Biological Station of British Guiana," with special reference to Crocodilia, on March 5, at Oberlin College. PROFESSOR ARTHUR KEITH delivered the Galton lecture before the Engineers' Education Society on February 16, the anniversary of Sir Francis Galton's birth. Ar a public meeting held on March 7, at Oxford University, it was decided to form the "Osler Institute of General Pathology and Preventive Medicine" as a permanent memorial to the late Sir William Osler. PROFESSOR OTTO BÜTSCHLI, of Heidelberg, distinguished for his contributions to cytology and other departments of experimental zoology, died early in February, aged seventy-two years. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL THE General Education Board has appropriated $250,000 to an endowment fund of at least $500,000 to be used by Howard University for medical education, "the income from the appropriation to be made available pending the completion of the full amount.” PLANS have been completed for a new chemical laboratory at Cornell University, and work will start immediately upon the closing of the spring term. The increased facilities which the new laboratory will afford will enlarge the scope of the department and will make possible the opening of new branches, in particular a department of industrial research for chemists. ACCORDING to plans now being considered by the authorities of the Johns Hopkins University, the libraries of the hospital, the school of hygiene, and the medical school ultimately will be collected under one roof in a new library building to be erected in the hospital group. GIRTON COLLEGE, Cambridge, has received a gift of £10,000, the capital and interest of which are to be applied during the next twenty years for the encouragement of scientific research by women in mathematical, physical and natural sciences. DR. G. CANBY ROBINSON, dean of Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, has resigned to accept a position as dean and professor of medicine in Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. DR. ARTHUR M. PARDEE, professor of chemistry at Washington and Jefferson College, has been appointed professor of chemistry and head of the department at the University of South Dakota to take effect next September. THE British Medical Journal states that in the appointment of professors to German universities precedence is at present being given to university teachers who have left towns which have passed out of Germany's possession. The anatomist, Professor Hugo Fuchs, who had recently been appointed to Königsberg, has thus been transferred to Göttingen as Merkel's successor. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE IONIZATION AND RADIATION RECENTLY I came across a communication by Professor R. A. Houstoun1 in which it was proposed to explain ionization of gases by X-rays on the basis of the classical conception of electrodynamics, by considering the intereference of spherical wavelets in which the phases are distributed at random. Professor Houstoun stated: When X-rays pass through a gas, only a very small fraction of the molecules-in favorable circumstances, one in a billion-is ionized by them, and the extent of this ionization is unaffected by temperature. Writers on radiation seem to have difficulty in reconciling this with the wave theory of light. I venture to suggest that the difficulty arises from an imperfect comprehension of what the wave theory requires. After applying Rayleigh's solution of the problem of the phases at random to ionization, he arrived at the conclusion: 1 Nature, April 24, 1919. Thus it is not necessary to assume that X-rays consist of neutral atoms, or that the ether has a fibrous structure, or to take refuge in the nebulous phraseology of the quantum theory; the explanation follows naturally from the principle of interference as expounded by Fresnel. This explanation of ionization occurred to me some ten years ago but I had soon to abandon it because it led to results which are at variance with facts. Let I/ denote the intensity in a wavelet at a distance r from the source, and n be the number of wavelets coincident at that distance. Then the probability of a resultant intensity greater than J is given by 66 LAST year Professor Francis B. Sumner published a very suggestive and interesting paper in The Scientific Monthly for March, dealing with "Some Perils which confront us as Scientists." In it he quoted with approval an indignant query: "Under what project did Darwin work?"-and again, one wonders what institution or organization Newton or Darwin belong to." The solitary worker of Down seems the incarnation of scientific genius illuminating the world with the products of its own combustion. On closer inspection, however, this conception is seen to be illusory. In the whole history of science there has perhaps never been a man who worked more faithfully and persistently on a project. It was his own project to be sure; but none the less a definite project. So also, there has rarely been a man who so constantly sought the cooperation of all who could and would render him assistance. The "Origin of Species" is full of acknowledgements to his friends and correspondents, without whom he would have been comparatively helpless. From a close study of Darwin's life, we arise with the conviction that it is precisely the man of genius who should be the center of a cooperating group, and that it is through such cooperation that human knowledge, at least in the biological sciences, is chiefly advanced. To-day the adequate study of even a simple species of plant, as I have found in dealing with Helianthus tuberosus, requires not only a general botanist, but a plant physiologist, a taxonomist, a chemist, a soil physicist, an entomologist and others. Who is so versatile that he can perform all these functions? Yet our institutions are so constituted that each department stands by itself, and cooperation is no part of the regular program. We must not permit ourselves to be dictated to by persons who can not understand our aims or the conditions under which we must work, but the state has a right to demand efficiency. Are we sure ourselves, and can we convince others, that we are not overdoing our individualism? The world needs to be made wise and honest: can we afford to refuse to work together to this end? T. D. A. COCKERELL UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO A CONVENIENT DEMONSTRATION MOUNTING FOR JELLYFISHES THE writer has found the following method of mounting jellyfishes (Scyphozoa), both convenient and satisfactory besides permitting the observation of many structures usually only clearly seen when specimens are removed from the preserving jar. Choose from the material on hand a jellyfish whose diameter is approximately that of a Petri dish in which it then may be placed, enough 4 per cent. formalin being added to cover the specimen. After the dish has been covered, it may be forced down in a mold of fresh plaster of Paris until the space between the upper and lower halves of it is sealed, and the top of the upper half is flush with the surface of the mold. When the mold has firmly set, any obscuring plaster of Paris may be scraped from the glass, or the mold itself suitably shaped up with a scalpel. Formalin solution condensing at any time on the upper lid may be displaced by manipulation. Perhaps the most convenient molding frame is a paper box of a size adaptable to that of the Petri dish, although it may be of any shape. It is best to vaseline the interior of the box, in order that the hardened material may come away freely. With some care, a clean-cut looking mount may be secured. If desired, the plaster of Paris part may be given a coat of shellac, making it more durable from the laboratory standpoint. Data concerning the specimen may then be placed upon it with India ink. It is seen that the above procedure is a modification of an old laboratory trick whereby odd bits of natural history specimens such as corals, sponges, specimens in vials, etc., may be given a convenient and useful mounting. HOLLINS, VA. N. M. GRIER ORGANIZATION OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION Ar its meeting on June 24, 1919, the "American Section of the proposed International Geophysical Union" passed the following motion: Moved: That the members of the Section who go to the Brussels meeting be constituted a committee, with power to add to its membership, to consider permanent organization of the Section-the committee, after completing a plan for such organization, to report to a meeting of the Section, to be called at the discretion of the acting chairman of the Section, for the purpose of perfecting the permanent organization. Adopted. The Brussels meeting referred to is that which was held from July 18 to July 28, 1919, to organize the International Research Council, and International Unions affiliated with it. At this conference the International Geo |