476 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 11, NO. 19 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



The Section of Vertebrate Paleontology of the U. S. National Museum 

 has recently received as a gift from the John A. Savage Company of Crosby, 

 Minnesota, an extensive collection of bones of an extinct buffalo, named 

 Bison occidentalis some years ago by Dr. F. A. T^ucas. These remains were 

 discovered in Pleistocene deposits which overlie a body of iron ore at the 

 Sagamore Mine near Riverton, Minnesota. It has been comparatively 

 easy to select a complete composite skeleton, which it is proposed to mount 

 for the exhibition collection. 



Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has appointed a committee of six 

 scientists from the Department to consider the problem of land utilization. 

 The committee consists of Messrs. L. C. Gray of the Office of Farm Manage- 

 ment and Farm Economics, C. V. Piper of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 G. M. Rommel of the Bureau of Animal Industry, C. F. Marbut of the 

 Bureau of Soils, E. E- Carter of the Forest Service, and S. H. McCory 

 of the Bureau of Public Roads. 



The Bureau of Standards announces that in testing a number of imported 

 sets of analytical weights it has been found that the weights from 500 to 

 50 mg. were made of a decidedly magnetic material. This property caused 

 them to behave very irregularly under test. Such weights can readily 

 be detected with a small hand magnet, and it would be well for purchasers 

 of analytical weights to be on their guard against them, as under some cir- 

 cumstances serious errors might be introduced thereby. 



Dr. C. G. Abbot of the Astrophysical Observatory sailed from New York 

 on October 26 for Antofagasta, Chile, to inspect the solar radiation station 

 at Mt. Montezuma. He expects to return in January. 



Dr. L. H. Dudley Buxton, anthropologist, visited the scientific institu- 

 tions of Washington in October, on his way around the world on the Kahn 

 traveling fellowship from Oxford University, England. 



Dr. ImmanuEL Friedlander, Director of the Volcanological Institute 

 of Naples, visited the Geophysical Laboratory and the U. S. Geological 

 Survey in October. 



Mr. James E. IvES has resigned as research associate and lecturer in 

 physics at Clark University to become physicist in the office of industrial 

 hygiene and sanitation of the Public Health Service in Washington. 



Dr. William C. Kendall, scientific assistant and ichthyologist of the 

 U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, has resigned after 33 years of service with the 

 Bureau, to accept the position of ichthyologist in the Roosevelt Wild Life 

 Forest Experiment Station of the New York State College of Forestry, 

 Syracuse, New York. 



Mr. George M. Rommel, chief of the animal husbandry division of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, has resigned 

 to become editor-in-chief of the American International Publishers, New 

 York City. Mr. Rommel had been with the Departmicnt since 1901, and 

 had been chief of his division since its organization in 1910. 



Dr. Ralph W. G. Wyckoff, of the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, is on a year's leave of absence, which he will 

 spend at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, California. 



