380 JOURNAL OF' THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIEJNCES VOL. H, NO. 15 



Mr. Fischer was born in Washington, D. C, January 4, 1864. He was 

 educated at George Washington University, and afterwards joined the staff 

 of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he was in charge of the ofifice 

 of weights and measures, the forerunner of the present Bureau of Standards. 

 He took an active part in the organization of the Bureau in 1901, and had been 

 in charge of its special division on standards of length, volume, and mass 

 since that date. He was a leader in the movement to promote uniform 

 standards of weights and measures in the States and municipalities of the 

 country. He was a member of the Academy, past president of the Philo- 

 sophical Society, and chairman of the Washington Section of the American 

 Society of Mechanical Engineers. 



Dr. F. E. Matthks, of the U. S. Geological Survey, has been spending the 

 summer in exploration of the crest of the Sierra Nevada as far south as Kings 

 River Canyon, in search of data on the earlier glaciation of the region. 



Mr. J. D. Northrop has been reinstated as geologist in the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, and has been assigned to duty in the mineral division of the Land 

 Classificat'-on Board. 



Dr. T. Okada, director of the recently established Imperial Marine Ob- 

 servatory at Kobe, Japan, visited the scientific institutions of Washington in 

 August. 



Prof. J. F. Rock returned in June from an eleven months' exploring trip 

 through remote parts of Siam, Burma, Assam, and Bengal for the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture. He showed the Botanical Society on June 

 27 the first photographs ever exhibited of the tree, Taraktogenos k^irzii, 

 in its native habitat. The seeds of this tree are the source of chaulmoogra 

 oil, a remedy for leprosy, and Professor Rock secured enough of the seeds to 

 assure the establishment of a plantation of the tree in Hawaii. 



Dr. J. H. Shrader, formerly with the Bureau of Chemistry, U. vS. 

 Department of Agriculture, became director of the bureau of chemistry and 

 food of the Health Department of Baltimore on July 1. 



Dr. George Otis Smith, director of the U. S. Geological vSurvey, 

 attended a meeting on July 20 in London as a member of the organization 

 committee of the International Geologic Congress. 



Dr. W. W. vSkinnER, chief of the water and beverage laboratory of the 

 Bureau of Chemistry, has been appointed assistant chief of the Bureau. 



Mr. R. S. Tour, chemical engineer of the Nitrate Division, Ordnance 

 Department of the Army, has been appointed dean of the department of 

 chemical engineering at tlae University of Cincinnati. 



Dr. TsAi, chancellor of the National University of Peking, China, visited 

 the scientific institutions of Washington in June. 



Mr. RosENDO Vargas, a member of the Taos tribe of Indians of New 

 Mexico, has been assisting Mr. J. P. Harrington of the Bureau of Ethnology 

 in the study of the ethnology of the tribe. Mr, Vargas is at present an em- 

 ployee of the office of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior. 



Mr. C. J. WEvST has resigned as director of the information department 

 of A. D. Little, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to become managing 

 editor of the Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants now being compiled 

 under the joint auspices of the National Research Council, the American 

 Chemical Society, and the American Physical Society. 



