416 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



report of the president, that in terres- 

 trial magnetism deserves special notice 

 this year, in view of the fact that it is 

 being provided with a permanent lab- 

 oratory. As the director of the depart- 

 ment, Dr. L. A. Bauer, points out, work 

 on terrestrial magnetism and atmos- 

 pheric electricity has been mainly ob- 

 servational. Magnetic and electric sur- 

 veys have been extended to nearly all 

 parts of the earth, and observatories 

 have been conducted at a number of 

 points at which are registered the vari- 

 ations to which the magnetic and elec- 

 trical elements are subject with time 

 and with varying planetary and solar 

 conditions. But hitherto there has been 

 no laboratory for the investigation of 

 these phenomena of terrestrial and 

 cosmical physics similar to the labora- 

 tories of astrophysics, to which are due 

 such remarkable progress in that sci- 

 ence. 



The Carnegie Institution, which in 

 the establishment of the solar observa- 

 tory at Mount Wilson has contributed 

 very greatly to the advance of astro- 

 physics, has now undertaken to con- 

 struct for its work in terrestrial mag- 

 netism the building of which views are 

 here reproduced. It is being erected on 

 a tract of land of about seven acres in 

 Washington, about a mile north of the 

 Bureau of Standards and the Geophys- 

 ical Laboratory. The grounds are suffi- 

 ciently removed from disturbing influ- 

 ences, so that the testing and compari- 

 sons of magnetic instruments and work 

 in atmospheric electricity may be suc- 

 cessfully carried on. The building, 

 which is now nearly completed, consists 

 of a basement, two stories, and an ob- 

 servation-roof, the size being 51 by 102 

 feet. 



In addition to the work done in Wash- 

 ington, magnetic surveys of land areas 

 have been made in various parts of the 

 earth, including the Sahara Desert, 

 Canada, west of Hudson Bay, north- 

 eastern South America and Australia. 

 The accompanying map shows how ex- 

 tensive have been these surveys, inclu- 



ding the two cruises of the non-mag- 

 netic ship Carnegie, which has now 

 traversed a distance of about one hun- 

 dred thousand miles, preceded by cruises 



: of some sixty thousand miles by the 

 chartered ship Galilee. 



The Carnegie Institution has, in addi- 

 tion to this new laboratory and its ad- 

 ministration building in Washington, 

 erected buildings for its departments, 

 each with their equipment, valued as fol- 

 lows: The Solar Observatory on Mount 

 Wilson and at Pasadena, $754,000 ; 

 the Geophysical Laboratory in Wash- 

 ington, $198,000; the Desert Laboratory 



' at Tucson, Arizona, $48,000; the de- 

 partment of Experimental Evolution at 

 Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, $70,- 

 000; the Nutrition Laboratory, adja- 

 cent to the Harvard Medical School in 

 Boston, $129,000, and the Department 

 of Marine Biology at the Tortugas, 

 $47,000. This last laboratory it is now 

 proposed to remove to Jamaica. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 



We record with regrat the death of 

 Dr. Robert Kennedy Duncan, director 

 of the Mellon Institute for Industrial 

 Research in the University of Pitts- 

 burgh; of Professor William Whitman 

 Bailey, professor emeritus of botany at 

 Brown University; of Dr. Roswell Park, 

 professor of surgery at the University 

 of Buffalo; of Edward Singleton 

 Holden, librarian of the U. S. Military 

 Academy, formerly director of the Lick 

 Observatory; of Dr. Albert Gunther, 

 late keeper of zoology in the British 

 Museum, and of Sir John Murray, the 

 distinguished oceanographer. 



Sir Francis Darwin delivered the 

 first Galton anniversary lecture on Feb- 

 ruary 16 in London. The subject of the 

 lecture was Francis Galton — Professor 

 R. W. Wood, of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, gave in London, on February 

 27, the first Guthrie lecture of the Phys- 

 ical Society, his subject being "Radia- 

 tion of Gas Molecules Excited by 

 Light. ' ' 



