SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



The Committee on Nomenclature, of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, consisting of Messrs. Wither Stone; (Chairman), editor of 

 The Auk; Jonathan Dwight, of the American Museum of Natural 

 History; H. C. Oberholser, of the Biological Survey and C. W. Rich- 

 mond, of the National Museum, met in Washington on February 11-12, 

 to consider the revision of the A. O. U. check-list of North American 

 birds. 



The Bureau of Biological Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 has begun a campaign, with State and local assistance, against pocket 

 gophers in Arizona. The gopher destroys fruit trees and crops and also 

 does considerable damage to irrigation ditches. 



Several European starlings, all captured near the District of Colum- 

 bia, have been presented recently to the National Zoological Park. 

 This imported bird is becoming iiacreasingly numerous around Wash- 

 ington. 



A fundamental mercurial standard for testing sphygmomanometers, 

 used for the measurement of blood pressure, has been constructed at 

 the Bureau of Standards. There 'c npears to be a great variation in the 

 different types of blood-pressure ^ ^es now in use, and a fundamental 

 study of their accuracy and design is needed. 



A special camera for taking panoramic photographs of the interior 

 of gun barrels which have been subjected to firing tests has been de- 

 signed at the Bureau of vStandards and is now under construction. 



Recent investigations at the Bureau of Standards on wood columns 

 from some of the temporary war buildings erected in Washington, 

 made of green timber which has warped and cracked in seasoning, 

 show that when warping and bending have occurred the strength is 

 considerably reduced, but that cracking due to seasoning does not weaken 

 the columns as long as they remain straight. 



Mr. ly. B. Aldrich, of the Astrophysical Observatory, Smithsonian 

 Institution, has built and partly tested a new "honeycomb pyranometer" 

 for measuring nocturnal radiation. Tests so far completed are very 

 promising. The flat-black surface of the ordinary pyranometer, which 

 is not a physically perfect "black body" for the long wave-lengths 

 radiated by the earth, is replaced by a surface made up of about 200 

 triangular cells, each about 3 mm. on a side by 13 mm. deep. A silvered 

 mirror below effectively doubles the depth . 



Dr. Paul Bartsch, of the National Museum, gave an illustrated 

 lecture before the Nature Study Section of the Twentieth Century 

 Club in February on "The ferns of the District of Columbia." 



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