APRIL 4, 1921 SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 171 



As for the special bill for a tariff on scientific supplies (H.R. TTSo), although 

 it had passed the House as long ago as August 2, 1919, the vSenate took no 

 final action and it lapsed with the adjournment on March 4. 



A bill "to fix the metric system of weights and measures as the single stand- 

 ard for weights and measures" was introduced in the House by Mr Britten 

 on December 29 (H.R. 15420), and in the Senate by Mr. Freunghuysen 

 (by request) on December 18 (S. 4675). The bills are said to have been 

 "fathered" by the World Trade Club of San Francisco. They were referred 

 to the respective weights and measures committees and no further action 

 was taken. 



The Smith-Towner bill to create a Department of Education (S. 1017 

 and H.R. 7) after lying dormant through nearly the entire life of the Con- 

 gress, was reported in the House on January 17 and in Senate on March 1, 

 but progressed no further. 



A step toward the erection of the proposed building for the National 

 Academy of Sciences was taken in the introduction of S. 4045, "to authorize 

 the Commissioners of the District of Columbia to close upper Water Street 

 between 21st and 22d Streets, NW." The bill passed the Senate on February 

 24, but advanced no further. 



With the adjournment of the Sixty-sixth Congress at noon on March 4, 

 various other bills and resolutions which are of interest to scientists and 

 which have been commented upon in this section of the Journal either 

 perished in committees or at the intermediate stage of progress last noted in 

 these columns. 



NOTES 



The twenty-third edition of the Directory of the Washington Academy of 

 Sciences and its affiliated societies (the "Red Book")appeared early in March. 

 This edition contains 2779 names and data concerning 35 societies. 



The following lectures have been presented before the Physics Club of the 

 Bureau of Standards during the present season: November 1, 1920, W. J. 

 Humphreys: TJie roaring mountain and associated phenomena. November 

 15, J. C. Karcher: X-ray spectroscopy, with special reference to X-ray spectra 

 in vacuo. November 29, R. C. Tolman: The rate of chemical reaction. De- 

 cember 13, F. C. Brown: Propagated light sensitiveness of selenium. January 

 10, 1921, I. G. Priest: Chicago meeting of the Optical Society of America; 

 E. A. Eckhardt: Chicago meeting of the American Physical Society. January 

 24, R. S. Woodward : The doctrine of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravi- 

 tation. February 7, P. V. Wells: Statistics, or the theory of sampling, and 

 its relation to the physical sciences. March 7 and 21, P. D. Foote: Modern 

 developments of the Bohr theory of atomic structure. 



The following-named officers were elected at the annual meeting of the 

 Scientific-Technical Section of Federal Employees Union No. 2 in December: 

 President: J. Franklin Meyer, Bureau of Standards; Vice-President: Geo. 

 A. Hill, U. S. Naval Observatory; and Secretary -Treasurer: C. T. Jarvis, 

 Bureau of Education. At the meeting of the Board of Delegates on February 

 24, D. R. Glass, Public Health Service, was elected Secretary-Treasurer, 

 to succeed C. T. Jarvis, resigned. The following were named members of 

 the Executive Committee: V. K. Chesnut, Bureau of Chemistry; Miss Eunice 

 Oberly, Library, Department of Agriculture; W. C. Thurber, Patent 

 Office; and W. I. Swanton, Reclamation Service. 



The section of vertebrate paleontology of the National Museum has just 



