was appointed chief chemist, in 1916, chief metallurgist, and in 1919, assistant director. Aside from his work on smelter smoke Dr. Cottrell has been intimately connected with work on the separation and purification of gases by liquification and fractional distillation. During the world war and subsequently the development of the Norton or Bureau of Mines process for the recovery of helium from natural gas has been his special care, and it was chiefly through his efforts that a plant for recovering helium on a large scale for military aeronautics has been erected near Petrolia, Texas. Dr. Cottrell is a member of the American Chemical Society, Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, the American Electrochemical Society, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded the Perkin medal by the New York Section of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1919 in recognition of his work on electrical precipitation. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS DR. AUGUSTUS TROWBRIDGE, professor of physics at Princeton University, during the war lieutenant colonel and head of the sound ranging service of the A. E. F., has accepted appointment as chairman of the division of astronomy, mathematics and physics of the National Research Council for the year beginning on July 1. DR. HUBERT WORK, of Colorado, first speaker of the house of delegates of the American Medical Association, has been elected president of the association. THE Council of the British Medical Association, at the meeting of April 14, resolved unanimously to recommend the Annual Representative Meeting that Dr. David Drummond, should be elected president of the association for the year 1921-22, to take office at the Annual Meeting to be held at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1921. Dr. Drummond is vice-chancellor and professor of medicine, University of Durham, and consulting phys ician, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. The council decided also to accept an invitation from the Glasgow and West of Scotland Branch to hold the annual meeting of 1922 in Glasgow. DR. OTTO KLOTZ, director of the Dominion Observatory, has been elected president of the Seismological Society of America. DR. WILLIAM H. WELCH and Dr. Ira Remsen, both of Johns Hopkins University, have been appointed to the Board of Electors for the Hall of Fame of New York University. DR. JOHN H. FINLEY has received the gold medal of the Geographical Society of Paris, in recognition of the English edition of his book, "The French in the Heart of America." The French edition of the same work was crowned by the Academie with an award of 1,500 francs. PROFESSOR RAY S. OWEN, of the department of topographic and highway engineering of the University of Wisconsin, has been made Officier d'Academie by the French government for his work in the intelligence department of the army. THE Howard Taylor Ricketts prize of the University of Chicago for 1920 has been awarded to Ivan C. Hall for his work on "Studies in Anaerobiology." This prize is awarded annually on May 3, this being the anniversary of the death of Dr. Ricketts from typhus fever while engaged in investigative work on this disease in Mexico City in 1910. THE Boylston Prize of $300 has been awarded to Messrs. Stuart Mudd, Samuel B. Grant and Alfred Goldman, fourth year students of medicine, for their research on The Effect of Chilling on the Mucous Membrane of the Throat and Tonsil," performed in the pathological laboratory of the Washington University School of Medicine. DR. LYMAN J. BRIGGS, formerly physicist in the Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, who had been on temporary assignment to the Bureau of Standards for research on aeroplane problems during the war, has been transferred per manently to the staff of the Bureau of Standards. H. H. HANSEN, chemist in charge of feeding stuff analysis in the West Virginia Experiment Station, has been appointed state chemist of Delaware in charge of a new laboratory which has been equipped in Dover, by the State Department of Agriculture to conduct the chemical and seed testing work of the state. DR. ARTHUR W. Dox has resigned as chief in chemistry of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station to accept the position of research chemist for Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich. DR. E. H. STARLING, professor of physiology in the University of London, who has gone to India to advise the British government with regard to the foundation of a central medical research institute for India, will visit Bombay, Poona, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi and Kasauli. PROFESSOR RICHARD P. STRONG, of Harvard University, will attend the annual congress of the British Royal Institute of Public Health, which is to be held this year, upon special invitation from Belgium, from May 20 to 24, in the city of Brussels. JOSEPH T. SINGEWALD, JR., associate professor of economic geology at the Johns Hopkins University, who has been on leave of absence since December to carry on geologic investigations in Peru, has returned to Balti more. DR. WILLARD J. FISHER, assistant professor of physics in the University of the Philippines, and since July, 1919, acting head of the department, is leaving the university to return to the United States this summer. MR. CALVERT TOWNLEY, president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, visited the sections of that body at Chicago, Milwaukee, Ann Arbor, Detroit and Toronto during April. He delivered addresses at each place. THE meeting of the New York Section of the American Chemical Society on the evening of May 7 was devoted to papers on the general subject of Colloids and Colloidal Chemistry in accordance with the following program: "The general chemistry of gelatine," by Jacques Loeb; "Silica gel and its uses," by W. A. Patrick, and "Electroendosmosis," by T. R. Briggs. A LIEBIG museum was opened at Giessen on March 26, when an address was given by Professor Burger on the relation of Liebig to medicine. APPLICATIONS for three Ramsay memorial fellowships for chemical research will be considered by the trustees. They must be received by June 15, by Dr. W. W. Seton, organizing secretary, Ramsay Memorial Fund, University College, London. The fellowships will each be of the annual value of £250, with, possibly, a grant of not more than £50 per annum for expenses, and tenable for two years, with the possible extension of a year. DR. E. SCHWALBE, director of the patholog ical institute at the University of Rostock, was killed during the recent rioting. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL THE Mississippi legislature has appropriated $250,000 for a new chemical building at the laboratory and other facilities for students in University of Mississippi which will provide the medical school. An additional appropriation of $10,000 was made to secure permanent equipment for the medical school, exclusive of chemistry. Additional funds were appropriated for the university with which salaries of all teachers could be reasonably increased. The total appropriation for the university exceeds $1,000,000. MR. F. A. HERON has given to Queen's University, Belfast, the sum of £5,000 to provide the necessary equipment for teaching physical chemistry, and £1,000 towards the provision of accommodation for the department. JAMES T. JARDINE, investigator for the United States Forest Service, has been elected director of the Oregon Agricultural College Experiment Station. A. H. FULLER, director of engineering at Lafayette College, and previously dean of engineering at the University of Washington, has been appointed head of the civil engineering department of Iowa State College at Ames, and will take up his new duties about the first of July. DR. OTTO V. HUFFMAN, who has resigned as dean of the Long Island College Hospital and has resumed practise in New York City, has been appointed à member of the faculty of the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital in the department of internal medicine. PROFESSOR F. B. ISELY, of Central College, Fayette, Mo., has accepted the position of dean and professor of biology at Culver-Stockton College, Canton, Mo., and will begin work in June. Ar Yale University instructors have been appointed as follows: Leonard H. Caldwell, in engineering drawing; Arthur H. Smith, in physiological chemistry; Wilbur Willis Swingle, in biology; J. H. Fithian, Jr., and Howard B. Meek, in mathematics. MR. JOHN B. FERGUSON, formerly of the Geophysical Laboratory, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and now a member of the research department of the Western Electric Company of New York City, has accepted a position as associate professor of chemical research at the University of Toronto. DR. J. H. ANDREW, chief of the Metallurgical Research Department of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth, and Co., Manchester, has been appointed to the chair of metallurgy in the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, vacant by the transfer of Dr. Desch to the University of Sheffield. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE AURORA OF MARCH 22, 1920 THE bright aurora of March 22 was first noticed at Urbana about 7:00 P.M. It must have developed quickly, for I had glanced over the entire sky looking for clouds at 6:45, with out noticing anything unusual. Soon after 7:00 the illumination was covering more than half of the sky but it was a couple of hours before the streamers were well marked near the magnetic zenith. This aurora was the longest in duration I have ever noticed at Urbana, as it was followed continuously from 7h to 13h, and observations of the apparent radiant were made at times during two hours. My assistant, Mr. C. C. Wylie, was also watching the display from a position a quarter of a mile distant from the observatory, and our independent estimates of the apparent radiant or focus of the streamers high up in the south, are given in the table. The times are Central Standard Time, 6 hours slow of Greenwich Mean Time. The mean of all estimates differed by only 0.07 from the magnetic zenith, as defined by the magnetic elements for Urbana determined by Mr. Merrymon of the Coast Survey in 1917. This agrees with previous results.1 The auroral light interfered with our photometric observations at the telescope that evening, because of the variable bright sky background for any star. A few rough measures gave the result that a patch of auroral streamer equal in apparent area to the full moon gave about as much light as a second 1 SCIENCE, 47, 314, 1918. magnitude star. This refers to the blue light which most affects the photo-electric cell, which is not very different from the photographic plate in color sensitivity. JOEL STEBBINS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS OBSERVATORY THE RECENT AURORAS AND SUN SPOTS THE object of this preliminary communication is to call attention to the coincidence with the recent magnetic displays of a huge disturbance on the sun approximately parallel to the sun's equator and over 205,000 miles long so situated that the whole of it approximately passed centrally requiring at least two days for its passage over the sun's center. The group of spots consisted of at least six larger and numerous smaller ones, all stringing along in a line. My first observation of it was on the 23d of March when most of the group had already passed the center by about a day. If the group existed prior to the 23d without essential modification, it began to pass the center between the 20th and 21st, showing a lag in the propagation from the sun to the earth, if there be such, of something like two days. This seems to favor Professor Snyder's recently announced statement that there is a lag of 48 hours. The observation seems at least to point to the fact of there being some kind of propagation. The central passage required about two days and the aurora was evident on the evenings of the 22d and 23d at least. Again on the 16th of April a medium-sized spot became central. It was probably one of the six spots of the before mentioned group. It was followed by a small spot some 200,000 miles after and also central about two days later. It was possibly another remnant of the old group, but too small to be of any consequence. It had disappeared by the 19th. Two or three days before the medium-sized spot became central, I remarked to several of my colleagues that I would not be surprised at auroral display or at least magnetic disturbances after it passed the center. I saw no aurora, the sky was unfavorable, and probably also the time, but on the morning of the 17th telegraph operators noticed a disturbance, which must have been due to the alleged propagation. If so the lag was about one day in this case. My measurements of the positions of all the spots were made on the sun's disc directly with the micrometer and will yield heliographic latitudes and longitudes of all the points observed, but I have had no time to make the computations. I would wish this communication to be considered as a first approximation to more accurate values. E. D. ROE, JR. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY, April 24, 1920 POSSIBLE CONNECTION BETWEEN SUNSPOTS AND EARTHQUAKES IN Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for April, 1919, Professor H. H. Turner has discussed data taken from the Catalogue of Destructive Earthquakes compiled by Milne and from the Catalogue of Chinese Earthquakes. He publishes tables of earthquakes extending back to 49 A.D. and refers to old Chinese records dating to 1820 B.C. From these data he slightly modifies two suspected earthquake periods, first published in the Report of the Seismological Committee to the British Association in 1912. The short period is shown by him to have minor and major limits of 14.8421 and 14.8448 months. The long period is taken as seventy-eight years. His tables show these periods almost certainly as real. Nine times the limits of the short period give 11.1316 and 11.1336 years. Newcomb has derived the sunspot period as 11.13 years and Larmor and Yamaga as 11.125 years. The chance that this close commensurability is accidental is as the difference, which is less than one one-hundredth of a year, is to the period of about 1.24 years. That is about one in two hundred and fifty. If the short period is so nearly commensurable the long period must be also. Seven times the sunspot period is 77.91 years, agreeing to 0.09 years with his round figure of seventyeight years. It would be interesting in this connection to analyze the counts by months of sunspots through several cycles to find whether there is any evidence of a short-period variation of this length, no matter how small. I hope to be able to do this within the next few months. DINSMORE ALTER UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SOME MICRO-PLANKTON FROM SALTON SEA As is generally known Salton Sea is a body of water covering a part of the Imperial Valley in southern California which is 230 feet below sea level, and it is formed by overflow of flood waters, or by waters diverted for irrigation, from the delta of the Colorado River. On December 16, 1919, Captain W. C. Crandall, of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research of the University of California, Dr. H. C. Bryant, of the California State Fish and Game Commission, and of the museum of vertebrate zoology of the University of California, and Dr. Will F. Thompson, of the California State Fish and Game Commission, started over the recently completed San Diego and Arizona railroad for a four days' biological investigation of Salton Sea. Captain Crandall made a few plankton oatches in Salton Sea and secured a number of water samples, temperatures, etc., besides making some rough physiographic observations. Dr. Bryant found about fifty different kinds of birds. Dr. Thompson's fishing equipment did not get through so he was not able to make the expected studies of fish. It was found, however, that Salton Sea is regularly fished for mullet which reach large size and are found in commercial quantities at present. Four hauls were made for microplankton in Salton Sea with a fine (Number 25) silk net such as has been in use for some time for marine work. The catches thus made were purely qualitative and were taken at the surface under adverse conditions. One catch indicated a rather abundant microplankton. Catches made at other points showed very little. The presence of the following organisms was noted in a hasty examination of the catches: Kera tella quadrata (Müller), Brachionus pala Ehr., (most of these had female eggs attached), Anabæna sp., Oscillatoria sp., Calastrum sp., Amphiprora alata Kuetz., Fragillaria crotonensis Kitton, Navicula sp., and Surirella sp. Physiographic features of Salton Sea are very remarkable. There has been a fairly constant reduction of level at the rate of about one foot per year for some years. Consequent recession of the water has left exposed numerous mud geysers, hot and cold springs, various types of mineral springs and some excellent paint pigments almost ready for use. In the sea itself, near the mouths of its tributaries, it is notable that the water is in two layers, the heavy saline water below and the relatively fresh above. It thus resembles ocean conditions near tributaries. The primary purpose of this memorandum is to call general attention to the fact that the Salton Sea locality offers extraordinary favorable conditions for continuous studies throughout the year in the lines of physiography, hydrography and biology. Since the microplankton is the biological group which gives the clearest index to biological conditions in water, it would be especially desirable to have that particular phase of biological study carried on. There is probably no other body of water in the world so favorably situated and conditioned for segregation and evaluation of major factors involved. It would be most fortunate for the progress of science in general if a biological station could be established in this region and its work assisted by that of a competent physiographer and hydrographer. SCRIPPS INSTITUTION, LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA W. E. ALLEN CONDITIONS IN HUNGARY TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: I have just received a letter from a professor in Hungary, which should, I think, be shared with the readers of SCIENCE. The writer is one of the leading scholars in that country in his department, and with him for many years prior to the war I have had a most pleasant acquaintance. I know that only real suffering |