NOTES. 795 



science, Robert Wilson in forestry, and K. L. Donovan in demonstration work. 

 F. E. Balmer lias been appointed district superintendent of county agents, 

 Bstella L. Jensen mycologist, William Dietrich animal husbandman at the 

 Crookstou School of Agriculture, and Alva Wilson animal husbandman at the 

 Morris School of Agriculture. 



Nebraska University and Station.— rReceot appointments Include E. G. Wood- 

 ward as adjunct professor of dairy husbandry and assistant in dairy hus- 

 bandry in the station; Russell C. Jensen as instructor in dairy husbandry; 

 H. B. Carpenter as adjunct professor of animal husbandry; H. M. Plum as 

 assistant professor of agricultural chemistry ; E. S. Bishop as assistant chemist 

 of the station; Neal T. Childs of the B^orest Service of this Department as 

 instructor in forestry; Dr. Fred Johnson as superintendent of the hog cholera 

 serum plant; Dr. S. W. Alford as assistant in serum production; George W. 

 Hood as adjunct professor of horticulture; E. E. Brackett as instructor in agri- 

 cultural engineering ; Miss Hester M. Rusk as instructor in agricultural botany ; 

 and L. M. Gates as field expert in entomology, vice John T. Zimmer. resigned 

 to accept a position in the Philippine Islands. 



Asso€iatlon of Official Agricultural Chemists. — The thirtieth annual conven- 

 tion of this association was held in Washington, D. C. November 17-19. 1913, 

 with the unusually large registration of 296. The presidential address, en- 

 titled The Progress of the Chemistry of Agriculture, was given by G. S. Fraps, 

 who maintained that the agricultural chemist of to-day should specialize in 

 one of the fields of agriculture, and that the agronomist and animal husband- 

 man need the cooperation of the well-trained chemist in research problems. 

 The abandonment of the teaching of agricultural chemistry in some institutions 

 was deplored as a senous mistake. The Adams Act and the Food and Drugs 

 Act were considered important steps in the progress of the sciences of agri- 

 culture and chemistry, and the demand for better investigators and more 

 accurate research under the Adams Act was pointed out. 



The report of A. J. Patten and L. S. Walker, referee and associate referee, 

 respectively, on phosphoric acid, dealt with work on the analysis of slag, es- 

 pecially the purity of the magnesium pyrophosphate precipitate. The results 

 obtained for total phosphoric acid were encouraging although not conclusive. 

 A lack of agi-eement among the various analysts was attributed to the presence 

 of iron and aluminum in the precipitate. The results with the volumetric 

 method were in closer agreement than those obtained by the gravimetric 

 method. For available phosphoric acid the molybdic acid, volumetric, and 

 citrate of ammonium-magnesium-mixture methods were not in close agreement, 

 and the provisionally adopted molybdate method seemed no more satisfactory 

 than the others. 



In a paper on The Use of Sodium Citrate for the Determination of Reverted 

 Phosphoric Acid, A. W. Bosworth pointed out that neutral ammonium citrate 

 does not, as is generally supposed, possess a selective power which enables it 

 to separate dicalcic phosphate from tricalcic phosphate. In one-half hour 

 at 65° C, 100 cc. of the official ammonium citrate solution was capable of dis- 

 solving 1.3 gm. of precipitated tricalcium phosphate. This was accompanied 

 by a precipitation of calcium citrate, which led to the belief that the solvent 

 action of the citrate solution is the result of a double decomposition started 

 by the free phosphoric acid always present in aqueous solutions in contact with 

 a solid phase composed of a phosphate. The differences between the results 

 obtained with the ammonium citrate solution and with sodium citrate were 

 no larger than those obtained by different chemists upon the same sample, 

 and the duplicate determinations in all cases showed closer agreement with 

 the sodium citrate. A paper noted on page 718 on A Simple Method for Pre- 



