SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



The Bureau of Standards has purchased eight acres of land west of 

 Connecticut Avenue and has let contracts for a new engineering lab- 

 oratory, 175 by 350 feet and four stories in height. The new building 

 and its equipment will cost in the neighborhood of $1,000,000, and will 

 increase the capacity of the Bureau by 50 per cent. The Pittsburgh 

 laboratory of the Bureau, including the work on glass and ceramics, 

 will be transferred to Washington. It is expected that the new building 

 will be occupied during the coming summer. 



i\Irs. E. H. Harrimav has turned over to the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington the Eugenics Record Office established by her at Cold 

 Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, in 1910. Included in the gift 

 are 80 acres of land, an office building, a large residence and the valu- 

 able records already compiled. Mi'S. Harriman also has created an 

 endowment fund jaelding an annual income of $12,000 for maintenance 

 of the work. 



Mr. Frederick Webb Hodge, since 1910 Ethnologist-in-charge of 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, resigned 

 on February 28, to accept a position with the Museum of the American 

 Indian, Heye Foundation, in New York City. Dr. Jesse Walter 

 Fewkes, ethnologist on the Bureau's staff since 1895, has been ap- 

 pointed chief of the Bureau. 



Dr. RoLLiN Arthur Harris, mathematician and physicist, who 

 had been employed in the Coast and Geodetic Survey for 28 years, 

 died on January 20, at the age of 55. He was a member of the Philo- 

 sophical Society, and one of the original members df the Academy. 

 His work was concerned principally with the theory of functions as 

 applied to geodesy and cartography, and with problems of tides and 

 cotidal maps. 



Dr. J. W. Turrentine, of the Bureau of Soils, is now in charge of 

 the experimental kelp-potash plant of the Bureau, at Summerland, 

 CaUfornia. The plant has been in operation since late August, and 

 is now marketing daily about $300 worth of materials produced inci- 

 dentally in experimentation. While primarily experimental, it is 

 built and equipped to make possible the obtaining of commercial data. 

 It has a capacity of about 150 tons of raw kelp per day, and its equip- 

 ment includes a self-propelling harvester; a pier with unloading device 

 and conveyors; rotary kilns and furnaces for drying; retorts for de- 

 structive distillation; lixi viator; evaporator and crystalhzer; centrif- 

 ugal dryers; and the necessary incidental equipment. Dr. Turrentine 

 has as his assistants Mr. E. B. Smith, formerly of the office of Public 



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