SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



An executive order by the President, dated February 26, 1919, trans- 

 fers twenty-three former officers of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 from the War Department back to the jurisdiction of the Survey; 

 and forty-six officers, similarly, from the Navy Department to the 

 Survey. Five Survey vessels are also returned. The transfers are 

 to become effective before April i, 1919. 



The Bureau of Mines has sent a special mission to Europe to collect 

 information on the methods discussed and those adopted in the rebuild- 

 ing of the mining and metallurgical plants and industries in the 

 devastated areas. The members of the mission are : F. G. Cottrell, 

 chief metallurgist; G. S. Rice, chief mining engineer; W. Perdue, 

 petroleum technologist; and F. K. Probert of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, consulting mining engineer. The mission will have headquarters 

 in London. 



Messrs. Hoyt S. Gale and J. B. Umpleby, of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, have gone to France to investigate certain questions of mineral 

 resources, particularly potash salts, involved in the peace negotiations. 



Dr. Olaf Andersen, of the Mineralogical Institute, Kristiania, 

 Norway, visited Washington in March. 



Lieut. Col. W. D. Bancroft, of the Chemical Warfare Service, 

 has been elected Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical 

 Technology of the National Research Council. 



Dr. W. N. Berg, formerly captain in the Sanitary Corps, and stationed 

 at Camp Lee, received his honorable discharge from the Army in March 

 and has returned to the Bureau of Animal Industry. 



Major Charles Harrod Boyd, for forty years an officer of the Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, died on February 9, 191 9, at his home in Port- 

 land, Maine, in his eighty-sixth year. He entered the Survey in 1855, 

 served with the Port Royal expedition in 1861, and served under Gen. 

 Barnard on the fortifications near Washington later in the war, re- 

 tiring from the Survey in 1894. 



Dr. H. L. Curtis, of the Bureau of Standards, has gone for a three 

 months visit to European laboratories to obtain data on the progress 

 of certain war problems. 



Dr. Alfred C. Hawkins, recently appointed crystallographer in 

 the laboratories of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, is spending 

 a few weeks in studying recent advances in this subject at the Bureau 

 of Chemistry and other Washington laboratories. 



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