SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



Dr. George E. Hale, Director of the Mount Wilson Solar Observa- 

 tory of the Carnegie Institution, gave the public lecture at the annual 

 meeting of the trustees of the Institution in Washington, on December 

 13, 1917. The subject of the lecture was "The development of the 

 telescope and our expanding conception of the universe." 



Prof. H. C. CowLES, of the University of Chicago, and Mr, E. W. 

 Shaw, of the Geological Survey, spent two weeks of last October 

 in Arkansas, continuing an investigation of the apparently fictitious 

 "lakes" which have been shown on the maps of northeastern Arkansas 

 for the past seventy-five years. Both the geological and the ecological 

 evidence show that the lakes have had no real existence within a period 

 of at least one hundred years. Their origin on the early land survey 

 maps is still a mystery; later maps simply copied the "lakes" from the 

 land maps or from one another. Messrs. Cowles and Shaw have 

 devoted several weeks of each summer since 1913 to this investigation. 



Mr. J. E. Spurr, formerly of the Geological Survey and for the past 

 twelve years a consulting mining geologist in New York and Philadel- 

 phia, has returned to Washington and is residing at 1755 Park Road. 



The Delegate of the Royal Swedish Government in the United States, 

 Dr. Hjalmar Lundbohm, is well known to Washington geologists as 

 the Director of the iron mines of Kiruna, Sweden, and author of papers 

 on the geology of these ores. Dr. Lundbohm gave a talk on the Kiruna 

 ores at the Petrologists' Club on December 18, 1917. 



Representative S. D. Fess of Ohio re-introduced on December 11, 

 1917, the bill for a national univei'sity. The bill provides $500,000 for 

 such a university for the fiscal years 1918 and 1919. The institution 

 would be governed by a board of trustees in cooperation with an 

 advisory council representing the states. It would confer no academic 

 degrees and would accept only students of postgraduate standing. 



The Patent Office Society of Washington has taken an active interest 

 in the proposed Institute for the History of Science, i realizing the great 

 aid obtainable from such an institution in the administration of the 

 patent laws, as well as its general usefulness in aid of scientific 

 investigation and the teaching of science. The Board of Managers of 

 the Washington Academy of Sciences has voted its concurrence with the 

 Patent Office Society in urging the location of the proposed Institute 

 in Washington. 



1 See Science, N. S. 45: 284, 635. 1917. 



