DR. L. I. SHAW, assistant chief chemist of the Bureau of Mines, has been transferred to the Columbus, Ohio, ceramic experiment station of the bureau, where he will have charge of some newly organized research on refractory products.

WILSON POPENOE, agricultural explorer for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, has returned to Washington after a two years' absence in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Mr. Popenoe has sent to Washington from these countries living material of numerous food-plants, including new varieties of the avocado for trial in California and Florida, several promising species of Rubus, the pejibaye palm (Guilielma utilis) of Costa Rica, a collection of potatoes from Ecuador and Colombia, and a superior variety of the Andean cherry (Prunus salificolia).

PROFESSOR FRANZ DOFLEIN, now at the Zoological Institute at Breslau, Germany, is completing a revision of his "Lehrbuch der Protozoenkunde." He finds it difficult to secure in Germany access to American papers in the field of protozoology published since 1916 and will welcome the sending, from investigators in this field, of reprints of their papers.

PROFESSOR HENRY NORRIS RUSSELL, of Princeton University, spoke before the Physical Colloquium of the Western Electric Company in New York, recently, on the subject "Ionization in the Stars."

PROFESSOR J. H. WALTON, of the department of chemistry of the University of Wisconsin, lectured before the Milwaukee Section of the American Chemical Society on November 18 on "The influence of impurities on the rate of growth of certain crystals."

Ar a joint meeting of the Washington Academy of Sciences, the Biological Society of Washington and the Botanical Society of Washington on November 12, Professor Arthur de Jaczewski, director of Institute of Mycology and Pathology at Petrograd, delivered an address on "The development of mycology and pathology in Russia"; Professor Nicholas I. Vavilov, director of the Bureau of Applied

Botany and Plant Breeding at Petrograd, delivered an address on "Russian work in genetics and plant breeding," and Dr. Vernon L. Kellogg, permanent secretary of the National Research Council, led a discussion on “The interrelations of Russian and American scientists."

DR. HEBER D. CURTIS, director of the Allegheny Observatory, lectured before the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia on November 16 on "The spiral nebula and their interpretation." On the following day he lectured before the Washington Academy of Sciences on "The sun, our nearest star."

THE series of lectures on The evolution of man" under the auspices of the Yale chapter of the Society of the Sigma Xi will include a lecture on "The evolution of intelligence" by the president of the university, Dr. James R. Angell.

THE winter course of popular scientific lectures before the Royal Canadian Institute at Toronto was inaugurated on October 29 by a lecture entitled "Some aspects of economic entomology," by Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. It is the purpose of the institute to have scientific men from the United States deliver lectures in this course during the coming season.

PROFESSOR DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON, of Columbia University, delivered a lecture on the Topography and strategy of the Western Front" before the officers of the Naval War College at Newport, on October 28. On November 1 he addressed the New York Post of the Society of American Military Engineers on "Geology and topography in relation to the strategy and tactics of the Great War."

WE learn from Nature that the 168th session of the Royal Society of Arts will be opened on Wednesday, November 2, at 8 P.M., when Mr. Alan A. Campbell Swinton, chairman of the council, will deliver an experimental address on "Wireless telegraphy." Among the papers fixed for the meetings up to Christmas are the following: The work of the industrial fatigue research board, by D. R.

Wilson; Modern buildings in Cambridge and their architecture, by T. H. Lyon; The coming of age of long-distance wireless telegraphy and some of its scientific problems (Sir Henry Trueman Wood Lecture), by Professor J. A. Fleming; and The preservation of stone, by Noel Heaton.

AN inter-allied exhibition of hygiene will take place in Strasbourg on May 1, 1923, on the occasion of the centenary of Pasteur's birth. The commissioner general is Professor Borrel, the secretary general M. Emile Henry.

A SENATE joint resolution by Senator Heflin of Alabama would authorize that $50,000 be spent in the erection of a monument in the city of Washington to Major-General William C. Gorgas, former surgeon-general of the army, in commemoration of the services rendered by him to humanity.

RAYNER M. BEDELL, electrical engineer, brother of Professor Frederick Bedell, of Cornell University, died of tetanus on November 5, at Montclair, N. J.

DR. MERWIN PORTER SNELL, a member of the scientific staffs of the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Fisheries in the years 1881-1889, died at his home at Stamford, Connecticut, on September 23, 1921, at the age of fifty-eight years.

THE death is announced on October 29 of William Speirs Bruce, the oceanographer and polar explorer.

DR. FRANCIS ARTHUR BAINBRIDGE, university professor of physiology at St. Barthomew's Hospital, died on October 27th at the age of eighty-six years.

ETIENNE BOUTROUX, professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne since 1885, died in Paris on November 22, at the age of seventy-six years. During 1910 M. Boutroux delivered a series of lectures at Harvard University.

THE death is reported from Paris, at the age of seventy-two years, of the French enginer, M. Albert Sarpiaux, who had long been connected with the scheme for the construction of a tunnel under the English Channel.

DR. PIERRE HENRI SOILLIER, honorary professor of the Lyons Medical Faculty and corresponding member of the Academie de Médecine, has died at the age of eighty-eight years.

OUR attention has been called to the fact that Dr. Emil A. Budde, whose death was announced in the issue of SCIENCE for November 18th, was president of the Electrotechnical Commission and not of the Electrochemical Commission as there stated. The succession

of presidents of the Electrotechnical Commission has been Kelvin, Mascart, Elihu Thomson and Budde.

THE Royal Astronomical Society of Canada will meet in Toronto with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and will join in the program of Section D of the association.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE FUR SEALS OFF THE FARALLONS

So little is known regarding the whereabouts of the Alaska Fur Seals during the period of their absence from their breeding grounds on the Pribilof Islands, that the following definite record will be of interest.

The observations here recorded were made by Mr. John Kunder, at that time keeper of the Farallon Light Station, and communicated to me by Captain H. W. Rhodes, superintendent of lighthouses, 18th district, San Francisco.

Mr. Kunder states that on or about March 4, 1920, at 9 A.M. a herd of seals appeared about two miles due south of the Farallons. They presented a compact front line about three miles in length. They were about two miles away when first observed and were moving toward the island. They appeared to stop for a moment to gaze at the object at their front, then their left wing slowed down and the right moving rapidly, the seals jumping out of the water, the line veered around in regular military formation and a new line was formed which moved off in a west-northwest direction. After completing the new formation the herd moved very fast. The line was well-formed at all times, there being few or no stragglers.

When first seen approaching, Mr. Kunder

says the commotion in the water was like a line of breakers coming from due south toward the island, but with field glasses it was easy to determine the real cause of the disturbance. Mr. Kunder estimated the number of seals in the herd at 8,000 to 10,000.

On March 10, 1917, Mr. Kunder witnessed a similar phenomenon. This herd appeared at about five o'clock in the evening, in the same locality, and its movements, appearance, and course were about the same as with the 1920 herd. The 1917 herd was, however, considerably larger than that of 1920, the number of seals in it being estimated by Mr. Kunder at 15,000. Mr. Kunder says he has never seen any single fur seals or small groups in the vicinity of the island.

So far as I am aware this is the first record of the occurrence of the fur seals in large compact herds anywhere in the open sea; they have hitherto been observed or reported only in more or less scattered numbers.

BARTON WARREN EVERMANN

CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

THE PHYSICAL MUSEUM OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

So much interest has been shown in this little museum that a brief description of it in the columns of SCIENCE seems worth while. It is the outgrowth of an attempt to build up on a small scale, for the benefit of our students, a collection of simple demonstration experiments such as is exhibited in, say, the Urania of Berlin. When our new laboratory was built some four years ago we arranged for a room, in size about 18 X 40 feet, parallel to the main corridor and separated from it by a glazed partition. In this we have gradually accumulated some forty "exhibits," each with an explanatory card setting forth the theory as simply as is consistent with scientific accuracy. While many of the exhibits are of the fixed variety, e.g., the parts of an ammeter, various stages of lamp bulb construction, transparencies and the like, the most interesting demonstrations, needless to say, are those which "work."

First and foremost, of course, is the Fou

cault pendulum, which in this case is 1440 cm. long and occupies a special well. It is started every morning at 8 o'clock and swings over a card graduated in hours (for this latitude). It is accompanied by a small rotating table of the usual demonstration variety with a miniature Foucault pendulum. A large electrically driven gyroscope mounted in a box which may be wrestled with, gives a striking demonstration of gyroscopic reactions. A loop-the-loop model, ball on stream of water, probability board (shot), Kater pendulum and simple air-pressure demonstration are among the other mechanics exhibits. There is also a conservation-of-angular-momentum rotating platform (contrived with the aid of a Ford front-wheel bearing) on which one may stand with a dumbbell in each hand and perform this somewhat startling experiment.

The Melde experiment, various Foucault current phenomena and certain magnetic effects are all susceptible of easy demonstration, as are also simple thermo-electric effects. One of the most interesting and simple optical arrangements is a pair of plane mirrors set at a right angle. In these one may-possibly for the first time" see himself as others see him," while reflected printed matter is readable. The explanation is almost obvious. Our two most recent and pretentious exhibits-an oscillating audion circuit and a vacuum discharge demonstration-have attracted considerable attention.

The interest shown in the museum has been very gratifying. Just now, although this is its third year, the attendance is in the neighborhood of two hundred visitors a day. It is very unusual to find less than half a dozen trying the experiments and sometimes the room is literally crowded full. The wear on certain pieces of apparatus shows graphically the thousands of times they have been handled. While drawn mostly from the student body the visitors frequently include the casual outsider who comes to take a "onehour course in physics."

It is very difficult to estimate just what good "results" may be claimed for such a

museum. Undoubtedly many come merely to toy with the apparatus, but some few pore over the explanations and ask questions about them. That it has awakened an interest in the subject in many for the first time may be taken for granted. One very definite advantage is that it allows the instructor to refer his students to certain experiments in the museum with the request that they try them and report on the results, e.g., all our elementary students determine, from its period, the length of the large pendulum.

However, while it seems eminently worth while it is needless to say that such a museum, simple as it is, will not run itself. Although it does not require the presence of an attendant, its continued demand for new experiments as well as the upkeep of the old ones would constitute a perhaps unwarranted liability on the time of the instructional force of the department if it could not, as in the present case, be entirely turned over to an ingenious and able apparatus man.

MADISON, WIS., November 5, 1921

L. R. INGERSOLL

HOW TO DO RESEARCH 1

I HAVE never done any research. I am therefore able to give unbiased advice regarding it.

Research-in the broadest sense-consists largely of repairing leaks in glass tubing.

More specifically, it consists of gathering in a cell down in the Ryerson basement a weird assembly of switches, wires and glass tubing and then keeping other students from borrowing it.

Apparatus may be borrowed or acquired. If you borrow it you are expected to return it. If you acquire it, you keep it until you are found out.

Tools at one time could be found in the student's shop. Now you find them everywhere.

1 Read at a gathering of the graduate students in Physics of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory on a social occasion preceding Professor Milliken's departure from Chicago.

In order to do research, one must have ideas. One idea is sufficient. Two ideas are apt to contradict each other.

Ideas are easy to get. If you haven't any, consult Dr. Gale. He can be found adjusting gratings down in the basement.

By all means do not search for something original. If you think you have a new idea read Professor Groszkopf's articles in "Zeitschrift für So und So" published about 1700. You will find he suggested the same thing two centuries ago.

After all, it is doubtful whether even one idea is necessary. Merely get some apparatus, solder it together and take readings.

Readings are always taken through a tele

scope.

You will get certain numbers. Plot these numbers against other numbers which you get from variable parts of the apparatus.

If you get a straight line on plotting your observations you know at once that the results could have been predicted.

However, if you get a curve the situation is different. Examine the curve carefully for sharp bends or breaks. If you find one, you have made a discovery. These breaks are significant. Consider carefully what may have caused such breaks. Try to trace them to atomic or electronic phenomena. Draw a picture of the atom. Don't be discouraged if your picture doesn't agree with other pictures. Dr. Lunn will show it doesn't mean anything anyhow.

Having obtained a curve and concocted a theory, it is befitting that you present the whole to the Physics Club.

The Physics Club was invented to keep research students from getting the big head. It consists of a crowd of professional knockers. There is one booster. You are the booster.

It is fitting here to give you details on your conduct at the meeting.

The latter is always preceded by tea. While this is being served go into the lecture roɔm and copy a few weird sketches of your apparatus on the board. Make everything as

complicated as possible. Also prepare a few slides. They may be shown at embarrassing moments.

As soon as the club is assembled, gaze upon them with a dreamy eye and begin your talk. The first step is to write nine long equations on the board.

Somebody will call your attention to the fact that the fifth term of the first equation should have a minus sign.

Memorize the equations beforehand if possible. Write them rapidly.

The success of your talk will depend directly on the number of people you can shake off at this point.

Mathematics is always helpful in this way. If your audience looks too intelligent, cover the board with partial derivatives and integral signs.

Having presented the equations dwell at great length on the sub-electron, the rigidity of the ether, or the density of petrified rhubarb in Siberia.

Finally when you see that vacant stare, indicative of a temporary lapse of intelligence, steal into the eyes of the front row, it is time to stop.

Pause for effect. Gather up your booksseveral volumes of "Annalen der Physik and four score and seven sheets of loose notebook paper and ask for questions.

There will always be questions. They are indicative of an intelligent audience.

Then there will be a discussion. In this you will have no part. However, at its close you will be convinced of three things:

First: that you were entirely wrong. Second: that you did a fine piece of work. Third: that it doesn't mean anything.

The moral of this paper is: It is much easier to take data than to interpret the results.

A. W. SIMON

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

Organic Dependence and Disease: their Origin and Significance. By JOHN M. CLARKE. Yale University Press, 1921. Pp. 113, 105 text figs.

In a new book, marked by deep thinking, and written with Huxleian vigor and picturesqueness of phrase, we have presented to us the philosophy of righteous living as seen by a paleontologist, a life-long student of Paleozoic faunas and floras. Beginning with a study of mutual and commensal living, we are shown how this develops into parasitism, and out of it all comes to us the true significance of ease in life and dependence. Progress, racial or individual, does not lie in this direction, and once entered upon, there is no return road to independence, the only righteous mode of living.

We need not present the evidence on which Clarke's philosophy is based, since the book itself gives this so clearly, but can go at once to the conclusions. Parenthetically, however, we would advise the reader to study along with the book under review Conklin's "The Direction of Human Evolution," s most interesting work on philosophical naturalism, showing what evolution has done for man morphologically, and what in all probability social evolution will do for him. In these two books we have revealed to us the naturalist's religion as Nature has unfolded it throughout the geological ages. As Conklin says,

The new wine of science is fermenting powerfully in the old bottles of theology.

The purpose of Clarke's essay is to set forth the apparent controls governing the historical origin of dependent and abnormal conditions of life, and from this evidence to generalize their significance to humanity. The bases of this knowledge are Paleozoic invertebrate fossils, plus the vista of organic accomplishments through untold millions of years. The evidence is presented without embarrassing detail and the conclusions without bias, and their human concerns are of high moment.

The author states that "disease is discomfort," and agrees with Huxley that "disease is a perturbation of the normal activities of a living body." In other words,

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