4M 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to take its place. The best advice that 

 Sir William Ramsay can give is to use 

 it economically. He, however, calls at- 

 tention to the forestry systems of Ger- 

 many and France, and the efforts in 

 this country on behalf of conservation. 

 He reminds us of the enormous quan- 

 tity of energy stored up in radium and 

 its constituents. If the energy of a 

 ton of radium could be utilized in 

 thirty years, instead of being evolved 

 at its invariable slow rate of 1,760 

 years for half-disintegration, it would 

 suffice to propel a ship of 15,000 tons, 

 with engines of 15,000 horse power, at 

 the rate of 15 knots an hour, for 30 

 years — practically the lifetime of the 

 ship. To do this actually requires a 

 million and a half tons of coal. We 

 are told, however, that the production 

 of radium will never surpass half an 

 ounce a year. If, however, the ele- 

 ments which we have been used to re- 

 gard as permanent are capable of 

 changing with evolution of energy, and 

 if some form of catalyzer could be dis- 

 covered which would increase their slow 

 rate of change, then a boundless supply 

 of energy would be available for the 

 human race. Sir William Eamsay says 

 that it would be folly to consider seri- 

 ously a possible supply of energy in an 

 acceleration of the liberation of energy 

 by atomic change ; but .he concludes the 

 address with the remark that while 

 radioactive substances are in all proba- 

 bility incapable of industrial applica- 

 tion, apart from medicine, their study 

 has shown us to what enormous ad- 

 vances in the concentration of energy 

 it is permissible to look forward, with 

 the hope of applying the knowledge 

 thereby gained to the betterment of 

 the human race. 



THE BISECTOR OF THE AMER- 

 ICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL 



HISTORY 

 Dr. Frederic A. Lucas, recently 

 appointed director of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, was born 

 in Plymouth, Mass., in 1852. At 

 the age of nineteen he entered Ward's 



Natural Science Establishment, a com- 

 mercial museum for the preparation of 

 natural history objects of all kinds. 

 Here he acquired his first practical 

 training in the preparation of natural 

 history specimens, including the mount- 

 ing of birds, mammals and other verte- 

 brates, the preparation and mounting 

 of skeletons and casts of fossils, and in 

 time he became manager of the estab- 

 lishment. During his connection with 

 the famous Rochester institution two of 

 his colleagues were William T. Horna- 

 day and Charles H. Townsend, and it 

 is noteworthy that these three men who 

 were working together thirty-one years 

 ago should one after another have been 

 called to direct the work of three of 

 the most important institutions of the 

 kind in this country if not in the world 

 — the American Museum of Natural 

 History, the New York Zoological 

 Park and the Aquarium. 



In March, 1882, Dr. Lucas was called 

 to the United States National Museum 

 as osteologist. He is to be credited 

 with the assembling, preparation, 

 mounting, classifying and labeling of 

 the fine osteological hall of the Na- 

 tional Museum. He was gradually 

 promoted until in 1902 he was placed 

 in charge of all the exhibits of the 

 department of biology. 



His admirable work in the National 

 Museum and long experience in mu- 

 seum methods of preparation and ex- 

 hibition, as well as his growing reputa- 

 tion as an investigator and writer, led 

 to his selection as curator-in-chief of 

 the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute 

 of Arts and Sciences, where he had 

 free play for his talents. Dr. Lucas's 

 work in the Brooklyn Museum has been 

 marked not only by great activity in 

 the acquisition of specimens and col- 

 lections but also by rare originality in 

 the display of natural history objects, 

 especially for the purpose of bringing 

 out principles of zoology and classifica- 

 tion in such a manner as to both attract 

 and instruct all classes of visitors. He 

 is practically the originator of the 

 small but admirably arranged collection 



