of entomology like E. C. Case and C. E. McClung, who achieved high scientific standing. His lecture courses in palaeontology were full of broad generalizations about evolution and in the highest degree stimulating and profitable to students with biological training, as I am informed by Melander, who took them. He did not have large classes at any time and his lectures were mostly informal in style, drawn from a rich experience and given in intimate association with the student, the kind that would make a deep impression. But his life work was mainly directed to the larger circle outside his institution.

While in New Haven he received a visit from C. V. Riley, who urged him to come to Washington as first assistant in the Division (afterwards Bureau) of Entomology. But Williston entertained a shrewd doubt as to whether he could be happy in a position subordinate to Riley, and declined the offer, although its acceptance would have meant a permanent position at an increased salary. This incident was narrated to me several times by Williston; it occurred about 1885.

In the last few years Williston published two volumes on fossil reptiles, his greatest specialty, and last winter was working on a handbook of reptilia, which was probably near completion when he was compelled to abandon it. If this volume can be printed, it will close up his work on the reptiles about as well as his Manual of Diptera did for the flies. My last mental picture of the man represents him on a day last winter, sitting at a table before a window in his study at home, in one hand a long-snouted reptilian skull, in the other a drawing pen, with which he was rapidly making a sketch of it. He attended the Pittsburgh meeting of the Entomological Society of America last winter and gave reminiscences of his early work on Diptera to an interested audience.

In physique he was large and vigorous, and mentally he was greatly endowed. I think I shall offend no living American dipterist when I say that he towered above us all. The truth of the assertion will be more clearly evident if we consider that his work on Diptera was never more than a side line, an absolute gift to science, accomplished in odd times while he was attaining distinction in anatomy and world-wide reputation in palaeontology, his main specialties.

Considering the positiveness of his opinions and his frankness in expressing them, his life was singularly free from scientific controversies, and especially from those leading down into personalities. In many long conversations with him, I do not recall that I ever heard him express a personal dislike for a scientific colleague, except in one case where he felt that advancement in a teaching position had been obtained by servility, and another where he felt that his own matured opinion had been treated rather contemptuously.

His last years were full of honors. He was a delegate to the International Zoological Congress at Monaco; Yale University gave him an honorary D. Sc.; he was chosen to the limited membership of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Entomological Society of America made him an honorary fellow, one of 7 out of its membership of 600.

He was married in 1880 to Annie I. Hathaway, of New Haven, who survives him, together with three daughters and a son.

I first knew him by correspondence in 1890, when on learning that I was beginning to work on Diptera he sent me separates of his papers. In January, 1893, I went to the University of Kansas to study, drawn entirely by his presence there. He received me with open arms, and helped me in every way possible until I left in July to take up my work in Idaho. Then I saw him only a time or two in 20 years, and had few and short letters from him, for he was a notably poor correspondent. After coming to Indiana in 1913 I was so near that we were frequently together. My sketch would be entirely inadequate without some acknowledgment of my personal obligation. In Kansas he lent me money; he wanted me to live in his house; he could not do enough to further my scientific aspirations. More than any other of my teachers, he became my ideal of a scientific man; and if in later years my ideal took on larger proportions, so he, too, seemed to expand in his mature powers; and at the close of his life I still feel that a splendid and inspiring example of scientific work and achievement is contained in his career.

(Extract from Entomological News, vol. 29, Nov., 1918, pp. 322327.)

THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL.

The sudden collapse of the central powers, and the consequent swift transition from war to peace conditions, fortunately did not take the National Research Council wholly unawares. From the time of its initiation in 1916, the Council has always recognized that its chief service could be best performed in times of peace, and the definition of its functions contained in the Executive Order issued by President Wilson on May 11, 1918, relates particularly to this possibility. Moreover, throughout the period of the war, when all of the divisions of the Council were organizing and promoting research to meet military and naval needs and to solve industrial problems of an emergency nature, the question of future activities and the provision of an organization adequate to deal with them were constantly in view. Since the signing of the armistice the chief work of the Council has been to utilize the various preliminary studies made during the war period for the formulation of a definitive scheme of organization and a plan of work in keeping with the heavy demands which existing conditions entail.

Apart from its numerous war activities, outlined in the present report, and to be treated subsequently in greater detail, the leading matters of interest in the progress of the Council during the past year are the Executive Order of President Wilson, the development of the work of the Research Information Service, the organization of the International Research Council, the report of the Patent Committee, the work of the Industrial Research Section, and the preparation of a plan of permanent organization. Before dealing with the reports of divisions on war problems, these phases of the Council's activities will be described.

THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER.

The congressional charter of the National Academy of Sciences provides that "the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art." Under this provision the Academy has acted since the time of its establishment as an official adviser of the Government on a wide variety of questions. During the Civil War, as the earlier records of the Academy indicate, its com

mittees and its members dealt actively with military and naval problems of precisely the same type as those which have insistently pressed for solution during the present war. It was thus a natural step on the part of the Academy to offer its services to the President at a time, in April, 1916, when our relations with Germany were already tense, and for the President to accept the offer, and to request the Academy to organize the scientific and technical resources of the country in the broadest and most effective manner, to accomplish the objects in view. He recognized clearly, as the Academy also had perceived, that new and important possibilities had been opened through the heavy demands upon science and research which had arisen through the exceptional necessities brought about by the

war.

But

In accepting the President's request, and in taking the steps that soon led to the establishment of the National Research Council, the Academy, fortified by its charter, waited for no more formal expression than that conveyed by the President's oral statement. as the work of the Research Council progressed, it became evident that a definite formulation of its objects by the President, and an expression of his desire that it be perpetuated by the Academy and permanently assured of the cooperation of the various departments of the Government, would serve a useful purpose. The President's recognition of this fact led him to issue the following Executive Order on May 11, 1918:

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL.

EXECUTIVE ORDER ISSUED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED States.

The National Research Council was organized in 1916 at the request of the President by the National Academy of Sciences, under its congressional charter, as a measure of national preparedness. The work accomplished by the Council in organizing research and in securing cooperation of military and civilian agencies in the solution of military problems demonstrates its capacity for larger service. The National Academy of Sciences is therefore requested to perpetuate the National Research Council, the duties of which shall be as follows:

1. In general, to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.

2. To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country for dealing with these projects.

3. To promote cooperation in research, at home and abroad, in order to secure concentration of effort, minimize duplication, and stimulate progress; but in all cooperative undertakings to give encouragement to individual initiative, as fundamentally important to the advancement of science.

4. To serve as a means of bringing American and foreign investigators into active cooperation with the scientific and technical services of the War and Navy Departments and with those of the civil branches of the Government.

5. To direct the attention of scientific and technical investigators to the present importance of military and industrial problems in connection with the war, and to aid in the solution of these problems by organizing specific researches.

6. To gather and collate scientific and technical information at home and abroad, in cooperation with governmental and other agencies, and to render such information available to duly accredited persons.

Effective prosecution of the Council's work requires the cordial collaboration of the scientific and technical branches of the Government, both military and civil. To this end representatives of the Government, upon the nomination of the President of the National Academy of Sciences, will be designated by the President as members of the Council, as heretofore, and the heads of the departments immediately concerned will continue to cooperate in every way that may be required.

THE WHITE HOUSE, May 11, 1918.

WOODROW WILSON.

Supplementing, as it does, the charter of the Academy, and serving as a permanent request for the exercise of such functions as the National Research Council has been able to render, this Executive Order points the way for the future work of the Council.

RESEARCH INFORMATION SERVICE.

One of the functions of the Research Council, as stated in the Executive Order, is "to survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country for dealing with these projects." The Research Information Service, inaugurated in cooperation with the Intelligence Services of the Army and Navy, and represented in London, Paris, and Rome by scientific attachés and their associates connected with the American embassies, is the first requisite in preparing such broad surveys. Properly regarded, this Information Service may be considered as the pioneer corps of the Council, surveying the progress of research in various parts of the world, selecting and reporting upon many activities of interest and importance, reducing the information thus collected to such a form as to render it most accessible and useful, and disseminating it to scientific and technical men and to institutions which can use it to advantage.

But the work of the Service must not end here. Its duties necessarily involve the collection of much detailed information; but to accomplish the larger objects of the Council its attention must not be confined solely to matters of detail. Out of this great mass of information, and out of the work of the various divisions of the Council, acting in cooperation with the Research Information Service,