NATURE 



[September 13, 191 7 



as other countries have established the organisation 

 required if they wish to adhere, there seems to be a 

 good prospect of a much more efficient control of the 

 dissemination of the fungus diseases to distant 

 countries than has ever been thought possible in the 

 past." , 



The memoir contains an appendix givmg a brief 

 history of the spread of most of the important crypto- 

 gamic diseases of cultivated plants, the extension of 

 which has attracted notice during the past seventy 

 years. 



PARIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 

 Bonaparte Fund. 



THE committee has considered twenty applications 

 for grants from the Bonaparte Fund. It is con- 

 sidered desirable to reserve the greater part of the 

 annual income until after the conclusion of the war 

 and to defer grants for the purchase of apparatus. 

 The grants recommended and approved by the Academy 

 are : — 



(i) 2000 francs to Edmond Bordage, for the publica- 

 tion of his histological researches on the metamor- 

 phoses of insects. 



(2) 2000 francs to E. Chauvenet, for the continuation 

 of his researches on zirconium. 



(3) 2000 francs to Gustave Dollfus, for the continua- 

 tion of his studies on the Paris basin. 



(4) 2000 francs to Henri Froidevaux, for the produc- 

 tion of a catalogue of the periodicals, more than eight 

 hundred in number, in the library of the Soci^t^ de 

 Geographie. 



(5) 2000 francs to Emile Gadeceau, for his studies on 

 the submerged forests of Belle-Ile-en-Mer. 



(6) 2000 francs to F. Gagnepain, for assistance in 

 the publication of an etymological dictionary of 

 botanical genera, with illustrations. 



(7) 2000 francs to L. Joubin, for pursuing at Messina 

 the researches he has undertaken on the deep-sea 

 Cephalopods. 



(8) 2000 francs to W. Kilian, for the pursuit of his 

 studies and his publications on the fossil fauna and the 

 stratigraphy of the south-east of France. 



Including the balance from 1916 (55,000 francs), the 

 amount in hand is 105,000 francs, and the balance car- 

 ried forward, after paying the above-named grants, is. 

 89,000 francs. 



THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL 

 SOCIETY. 



THE American Philosophical Society held a very 

 successful meeting in Philadelphia on April 

 12-14. The address of welcome was delivered by the 

 president. Dr. W. W. Keen, who, with Vice-Presidents 

 W. B. Scott and G. E. Hale, and with Dr. A. A. Michel- 

 son, presided. More than forty papers were presented. 

 The national crisis also received some attention, Dr. 

 M. T. Bogert, of Columbia University, outlining the 

 work chemists may do to aid the National Research 

 Council in tTie solution of Certain war problems. Suit- 

 able badges to identify " members of the industrial 

 army " so that they may not be called slackers was urged. 

 Attention was directed to England's mistake in per- 

 mitting general enlistment for "the front" when in 

 many cases men with special ability could have been 

 of much more value using their brains in the labora- 

 tory. A well-trained industrial army Is just as impor- 

 tant as the army of fighters. 



A brief outline of the effect of different lighting 



conditions on the eye and the factors which cause the 



^eye to lose in efficiency and to experience discomfort 



'was given bv Dr. C. E. Ferree, of Bryn Mawr Col- 



NO. .2498, VOL. 100] 



lege. More than forty different lighting conditions 

 have been investigated, and many experiments con- 

 ducted pertaining to the hygienic use of the eye. The 

 loss of efficiency sustained by the eye in an unfavour- 

 able lighting situation seems to be muscular, not 

 retinal. The retina has been found to lose little, if 

 any, more in functional activity under one than under 

 another of the lighting systems employed. The obser- 

 vation of motion pictures for two or more hours causes 

 the eye to lose heavily In efficiency. The loss decreases 

 rather regularly with increase of distance from the pro- 

 jection screen. It seems little, if any, greater, however, 

 than the loss caused by an equal period of steady read- 

 ing under much of the artificial lighting in actual use. 

 In all the lighting situations tested a close correlation 

 was found to obtain between the loss in power to 

 sustain clear seeing and the tendency to produce 

 ocular discomfort. 



A spectroscopic method of deriving the absolute 

 magnitudes of stars, and a new formula connecting 

 parallax and proper motion tor studying the relation- 

 ship between the motion of stars and their true or 

 absolute magnitudes, were described by Dr. W. S. 

 Adams, of Mount Wilson Observatory. About one 

 thousand stars have been used in the investigation, 

 and the results establish almost certainly a definite 

 increase in velocity with decrease in brightness. 



The skeleton of a gigantic extinct bird found last 

 summer in the Bighorn basin of Wyoming by an 

 expedition from the American Museum of Natural 

 History was described by Dr. W. D. Matthew, one 

 of the curators. It is of the Lower Eocene age, a 

 contemporary of the little four-toed horse, the fossil 

 remains of which are found in the same region. The 

 bird was about as large as the extinct moas of New 

 Zealand, much bulkier than any living bird, although 

 not so tall as an ostrich. It stood nearly 7 ft. high. 

 The head was enormous, 18 in. long with huge com- 

 pressed beak like the extinct Phororhachos of Pata- 

 gonia, but unlike any living bird. The neck, too, was 

 very massive and rather short, and it was quite unable to 

 fly, the wings being about as large as in the cassowary. 

 Although it resembled the modern ostrich group in 

 some ways, it was not related to them, and only 

 remotely related to any other known birds, the nearest 

 perhaps being the serlema of South America. A few 

 fragments of this gigantic bird were found by the late 

 Prof. Cope more than forty years ago, and named 

 Diatryma, but It remained practically unknown until 

 the discovery of this nearly complete skeleton. A 

 description of this specimen by W. D. Matthew and 

 Walter Granger, with photographs and a reconstruc- 

 tion, will appear in the Bulletin of the American 

 Museum. 



In a paper by E. S. Botch, of Philadelphia, the pre- 

 sent status of our knowledge about early man in 

 America was summed up as follows. Man lived dur- 

 ing at least a part of the Pleistocene period for tens 

 of thousands of years south of the Glacial moraines. 

 He probably went through an Eollthic period, and 

 certainly through a Chelleen period in some places, 

 and therefore was truly a Palaeolithic man. He may 

 have shown rudimentary fine art. Palaeolithic American 

 man was the ancestor of the Neolithic historic Indian, 

 and although less advanced in culture, much like his 

 descendant in anthropological characteristics. Whether 

 he was an autochthon in America or whether he came 

 from some other piece, and, if so, when, we do hot 

 as yet know positively, although his affiliations seem 

 to be to the west. And It is to four men above, all 

 others that we owe our knowledge : Abbott, the dis- 

 coverer of Palaeolithic implements and horizons; Volk, 

 the corroborator; Lund, the first finder of probably 

 Palaeolithic bones ; and WInchell, the Investigator of 

 patination. 



