5o8 



NATURE 



[August 28. 1919 



visionally made by the founder as regards library 

 buildings and church organs ; but while they are 

 fulfilling these they are starting on their own 

 initiative inquiries and operations in other direc- 

 tions that are likely to bear good fruit. The 

 elaborate investigations and reports they have 

 subsidised and published on the library system, 

 urban and rural, on plans for the physical well- 

 being of mothers and children, on public play- 

 centres and playgrounds, on municipal baths and 

 wash-houses, etc., have been real contributions 

 to knowledge. During this time of reconstruction 

 a Trust that is thus accurately informed as to 

 public needs, and able to aid in meeting them, is 

 bound to render valuable service to the com- 

 munity. In this country already something like 

 700 Carnegie libraries, costing some 2.\ millions, 

 have been provided. 



In the United States and Canada Mr. Carnegie's 

 benefactions have been even more generous and 

 more wide-reaching. Altogether they are more 

 than 6o,ooo,oooZ. One endowment provides pen- 

 sions and retiring allowances for professors in 

 approved American colleges and universities. Here 

 again the indirect effect has been more important 

 than the direct. To be "approved," an institution 

 has to fulfil conditions as to government, efficiency, 

 and standing laid down by the Trustees, with the 

 result that many radical reforms in organisation 

 have been induced, and a general raising of the 

 educational standard has taken place. Another 

 endowment — that of the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington — is professedly for the encourage- 

 ment of scientific research in the widest sense of 

 the term. Elaborate institutions in all parts of the 

 pnited States, and foV all branches of scientific 

 inquiry, have grown up under its fosterage. Ex- 

 peditions have been subsidised, equipment of a 

 costly kind has been supplied for observatories, 

 laboratories, and biological and other experimental 

 stations, and also for individual v/orkers every- 

 where who prove their competence 'o use it fruit- 

 fully. The Mount Wilson Observatory, of which 

 Dr. G. E. Hale is director, is one of the most 

 notable of these institutions. The grant to this 

 observatory last year exceeded 30,000?., and the 

 total amount expended upon the observatory since 

 its foundation is more than 250,000?. There is 

 also in New York a central Carnegie Trust, 

 charged to assist the others as need arises, and 

 generally to do for America what the United 

 Kingdom Trust does for this country. 



The difficulty of so applying his wealth as 

 to avoid doing harm was always present to 

 Mr. Carnegie's mind. Critics of his schemes 

 did not let him forget it. In establishing 

 here, and in other countries, Hero Funds for 

 the recognition of individual deeds of self- 

 sacrifice in the saving of life, and in founding 

 a wealthy organisation for the express purpose 

 of propagating peace and international goodwill, 

 he thought that he had succeeded in safeguarding 

 the principle of nil nocere. The war caused him 

 to forgo some of his most cherished preposses- 

 sions, particularly as regards Germany and the 

 NO, 2600, VOL. 103] 



ex-German Emperor, and the prospect of building 

 up a world-wide peace based upon democratic 

 solidarity. In spite of his hatred of warfare and 

 the spirit associated with it, he came to see 

 that only by the military victory of the Allies 

 could the future of true civilisation be assured, 

 and he willingly assented to a large grant from 

 the Peace Fund for the relief of Belgian distress. 

 In general, it may truly be said that Mr. 

 Carnegie's ideas were based on sane visions of 

 human progress, that he backejd them lavishly, and 

 that he enlisted the best men of his time in their 

 working out. Their fruition, if it comes more 

 tardilv than in his eagerness he hoped, will come 

 surely in some fashion, even if it be other than 

 he pictured. He "builded better than he knew." 



WALTER GOULD DAVIS. 

 TV/TR. WALTER GOULD DAVIS, director 

 -LVl of the Meteorological Bureau of Argentina 

 for many years, died at his birthplace, Danville, 

 Vermont, U.S.A., on April 30 in his sixty-eighth 

 year. His early traming was that of a 

 civil engineer, especially in railroad surveying 

 through the White Mountains. When in his early 

 twenties, he went to Argentina as assistant to his 

 uncle. Dr. B. A. Gould, founder of the Cordoba 

 Astronomical Observatory. On the resignation of 

 Dr. Gould in 1885, the National Meteorological 

 Service, which was then a branch of the Cordoba 

 Observatory, was reconstituted and Mr. Davis 

 appointed director at the early age of thirty-four. 



The organisation of such a service in a new 

 country where voluntary observers are few was a 

 matter calling for great energy, tact, and perse- 

 verance, but so successful was Mr. Davis in his 

 efforts that by 1901 the seventeen meteorological 

 stations to which he fell heir in 1885 had increased 

 to eighty-eight, and 240 extra rainfall stations had 

 been established. Thereafter the service developed 

 with ever increasing rapidity, and on his retirement 

 in 191 5 there were forty-two stations of the first 

 order, 152 of the second order, while rainfall was 

 being observed at 1930 other places. The 

 removal of the central office from Cordoba to 

 Buenos Aires in 1901 enabled the long-cherished 

 scheme of a daily weather map to be realised, and 

 effective co-operation with other South American 

 Republics resulted in the production of a daily 

 weather map which covers 53° of latitude from 

 Para, near the Equator, to Punta Arenas, in 

 Magellan Strait. Mr. Davis established the 

 hydrometric branch of his service in 1902 and 

 was responsible for the dispatch of expeditions 

 to investigate conditions in the Rio Parana, 

 Paraguay and Pilcomayo, and other rivers in Matto 

 Grosso and near the eastern Bolivian boundary. 

 In 1904 he established a magnetic section with a 

 central observatory at Pilar, near Cordoba, from 

 which magnetic surveys of the whole country 

 were organised in 1908 and 1912. In the latter 

 year the systematic measurement of the level of the 

 subterranean waters by means of gauges at 

 twenty-three places was initiated. In February, 



