July 20, 19 16] 



NATURE 



425 



Gladstone prize, held for a time the position of tutor 

 under the Workers' Educational Association, and 

 afterwards accepted a lectureship at the University of 

 Bristol, where he found that combination of learning 

 and industrialism which naturally appealed to a man 

 of his inclinations and ability. 



The issue of Science for June 23 last publishes the 

 text of a Bill introduced by Mr. Newlands last March 

 m the Senate of the United States, the object of 

 which is to establish engineering experiment stations 

 in the State colleges of the United States. The Bill 

 was read twice, and has been referred to the Com- 

 mittee of the Senate on Agriculture and Forestry. The 

 Committee of One Hundred on Scientific Research of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science has passed a resolution recommending the 

 passage of the Bill, and emphasising the untold value 

 to American agriculture of the similar agricultural 

 experiment stations already established by the State 

 in connection with the colleges. The Bill provides 

 that " in order to aid in acquiring and diffusing among 

 the people of the United States useful and practical 

 information on subjects connected with engineering 

 and the other branches of the mechanic arts, and to 

 promote the scientific investigation and experiment re- 

 specting the principles and applications of the mechanic 

 arts," there shall be established under the direction 

 of the State college in each State a department to 

 be known as an "engineering" or a '"mechanic arts" 

 experiment station. The Bill provides also for a grant 

 of 3000/. a year to each State for the purposes of such 

 an exf>eriment station. It is worthy of note in this 

 connection that, according to the Scientific Monthly, 

 these State, or land grant, colleges and the institutions 

 of which they are a part received in 1914, from the 

 United States, 500,000^. ; from the States and from 

 other sources, more than 6,000,000/. They have 9000 

 instructors and 105,000 students. 



Another attempt is being made to rescue the 

 stranded Antarctic explorers on Elephant Island. Last 

 week Sir Ernest Shackleton left Punta Arenas in an 

 auxiliary motor schooner of 70 tons, placed at his 

 disposal by the British settlers in the Magellan Straits. 

 The vessel was to be towed south so far as possible 

 by a steamer lent by the Chilian Government. The 

 prospects of a rescue are considerably better than in 

 the attempt made in the Instituto Pesca, for the Emma 

 is a wooden vessel, and so better suited for the work. 

 Moreover, the probability of open water up to Elephant 

 Island is greater this month than last, when the ice 

 conditions were exceptionally severe. There is, how- 

 ever, a possibility of failure, for the vessel has not 

 power to force her way into pack-ice, and as no time 

 must be lost in effecting a rescue of Wild and his 

 men, arrangements have been made by the British 

 Government to dispatch a relief ship from this country 

 without further delay. Meanwhile, the Aurora is 

 being repaired by the New Zealand Government, and 

 will leave Dunedin in December under the command 

 of Mr. Stenhouse, her first officer, to fetch Mackin- 

 tosh and his party at Cape Royds. There is no likeli- 

 hood that the Aurora will find any difficulty in pene- 

 trating the Ross Sea, or that the men at Cape Royds 

 are in serious straits. 



The Athens correspondent of the Times reports that 

 a decree has been published whereby from 4 a.m. on 

 July 28 Greece will adopt East European time, and 

 will thus be two hours in advance of Greenwich mean 

 time, and one hour in advance of Summer Time. 



The Indian Forester records with great regret the 

 <ieath in action (in Flanders) of 2nd Lieut. G. R. 

 Jeffen,', deputy conservator of forests, Burma. We 



NO. 2438, VOL. 97] 



j learn that Mr. Jeffery was born on December 12, 1880, 



I educated at Coopers Hill, and joined the Imperial 



j Forest Service in 1902. He was a man of high ability 



i and professional knowledge, and his death will be a 



j serious loss to the Forest Department. 



I On August 24-26 the third annual conference of the 

 Society for Practical Astronomy will be held at the 

 Bausch and Lomb Observatory in Rochester, N.Y. 

 ' The president of the society, Mr. L. J. Wilson, extends 

 i the invitation to the meeting to all who are interested 

 i in astronomy. The observatory at which the meeting 

 : will be held is equipped with an ii-in. refractor oon- 

 l structed by the Bausch and Lomb Optical Company. 



1 Dr. J. C. Tello, Mr. G. K. Noble, and Dr. L. S. 



j Moss have left New York on a South American ex- 



i pedition on behalf of the Harvard Museum of Com- 



; parative Anatomy. Arriving at Paita, in Peru, they 



will travel on mules across the Andes and into the 



Amazon Valley, where they hope to collect zoological 



specimens and to study the tribe of Guanani Indians. 



An important ethnological expedition is about to be 

 ; undertaken by Dr. R. H. Lowie, of the American 

 Museum of Natural History. He will visit, first, the 

 Crow Reservation in southern Montana, where he 

 hopes to secure a thorough-going account of the war 

 customs of the tribe and to complete a collection of 

 i myths and folk-tales, .\fter spending a short time 

 j with the Arapaho, of Wind River, Wyoming, in order 

 j to re-examine their ceremonial organisations. Dr. 

 ! Lowie will proceed to northern Arizona, where an 

 investigation of certain problems connected with the 

 Hopi will be carried out in considerable detail. The 

 main points of inquiry will be the character and func- 

 tions of the Hopi medicine-man, and the nature of the 

 religious feelings underlying the ceremonial perform- 

 ances already noted by previous observers. 



The President of the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries has appointed Mr. Richard Brown, Walton 

 Bank, Eccleshall, Staffordshire, to be a member of the 

 .\gricultural Consultative Committee. 



The wireless station on Dickson Island was to have 

 been dismantled, but thanks to the timely and en- 

 lightened intervention of the Russian Naval Ministry^ 

 which is providing the necessary- funds, its existence 

 is saved, and it will be able to carry on work, not 

 only of great scientific value, but also of practical 

 utilit}' for Arctic navigation, which is just now of 

 special importance for Russia. 



The Prime Minister has appointed a Committee to 

 consider the commercial and industrial policy to be 

 adopted after the war, with special reference to the 

 conclusions reached at the Economic Conference of the 

 Allies, and to the following questions : — (a) What 

 industries are essential to the future safety of the 

 nation ; and what steps should be taken to maintain 

 or establish them. (6) What steps should be taken to 

 recover home and foreign trade lost during the war, 

 and to secure new markets. (c) To what ex- 

 tent and by what means the resources of the Em- 

 pire should and can be developed, (d) To what extent 

 and by what means the sources of supply within the 

 Empire can be prevented from falling under foreign 

 control. The Committee is composed as follows : — 

 The Right Hon. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, K.T., 

 G.C.M.G. (chairman), Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. H. 

 Gosling, Mr. W. A. S. Hewins, M.P., Mr. A. H. 

 Illingworth, M.P., Sir J. P. Maclay, Bt.. the Right 

 Hon. Sir A. Mond, Bt., M.P., Mr. Arthur Pease, 

 Mr. R. E. Prothero, M.P., Sir Frederick H. Smith, 

 Bt., Mr. G. J. Wardle, M.P., together with the follow- 



