484 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



$5,000 to Dr. Lewis Boss, Dudley 

 Observatory, Albany, N. Y., for as- 

 tronomical observations and computa- 

 tions, and $4,000 to Professor W. W. 

 Campbell for pay of assistants in re- 

 searches at Lick Observatory. 



Several of the largest appropriations 

 were made in bibliography: $10,000 

 to Dr. Robert Fletcher, Army Medical 

 Museum, Washington, D.C., for pre- 

 paring and publishing the Index 

 Medicus; $7,500 to Ewald Fliigel, 

 Stanford University, for the prepara- 

 tion of a lexicon to the works of 

 Chaucer, and $5,000 to Mr. Herbert 

 Putnam, Washington, D. C, for pre- 

 paring and publishing a handbook of 

 learned societies. 



Other grants as large as $5,000 were 

 for the desert botanical laboratory, de- 

 scribed by Professor Lloyd in the last 

 issue of the Monthly, $5,000; to 

 Bailey Willis, U. S. Geological Survey, 

 Washington, for geological exploration 

 in eastern China, $12,000; for the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory, at 

 Woods Hole, Mass., $10,000; to Pro- 

 fessor W. F. M. Goss, Purdue Uni- 

 versity, for a research to determine the 

 value of high steam pressures in loco- 

 motive service, $5,000; to Professor 

 W. O. Atwater, Wesleyan University, 

 for investigations in nutrition. $7,000 ; 

 to Professor Arthur Gamgee, Montreux, 

 Switzerland, for preparing a report on 



the physiology of nutrition, $6,500. 

 Numerous smaller grants were made 

 from $100 upwards, and twenty-five re- 

 search assistants were appointed with 

 stipends ranging from $1,000 to $1,800. 

 It is perhaps too early to express an 

 opinion on the fruitfulness of the work 

 of the institution. It appears that the 

 large projects are more likely to yield 

 j valuable results than the smaller 

 ! grants. The department of experi- 

 mental evolution is certainly a useful 

 undertaking, though we should prefer 

 to see a laboratory established and left 

 to develop as a separate institution on 

 its own lines. The same is true of the 

 solar observatory on Mount Wilson. 

 Admirable work is sure to be accom- 

 plished under Professor Hale's direc- 

 tion, and an observatory should be 

 established where the ' seeing ' is the 

 best. But the Yerkes Observatory was 

 recently built and equipped with the 

 largest of telescopes, and it seems un- 

 fortunate that it should be necessary 

 for the director and part of the staff 

 to be transferred at the expense of the 

 Carnegie Institution to a new observa- 

 tory in California, where there is 

 already a mountain observatory of 

 world-wide reputation. In most, 

 though not in all, cases the secondary 

 grants appear to have been safely be- 

 stowed, but usually for rather obvious 

 and routine work, which might pro- 





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The Marine Biological Laboratory at Tortugas, Florida. 



