OcTOB« 15, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



525 



North Carolina College of Agriculture and 

 Mechanic Arts, for the year 1909-10: Dr. L. 

 F. Williams promoted from an instructorship 

 to an assistant professorship; Burton J. Ray, 

 A.B. (Wake Forest, Ph.D., Cornell), instruc- 

 tor in organic chemistry and assistant chemist 

 in the Experiment Station; Frank W. Sher- 

 wood, B.S. (North Carolina A. & M.), assist- 

 ant chemist in the Experiment Station. 



Reginald E. Hore, of Toronto, formerly in- 

 structor in the University of Michigan and in 

 Queens University, has been appointed in- 

 structor in petrography in the Michigan Col- 

 lege of Mines, Houghton. 



Dr. E. B. Hutchixs, Ph.D. (Wisconsin), 

 has resigned the professorship of chemistry at 

 CarroU College to accept the position of man- 

 ager of a manufacturing establishment in 

 Fond du Lac, Wis. S. B. Hopkins, Ph.D. 

 (Johns Hopkins), has been elected to the 

 position at Carroll College. 



Dr. a. H. Gibson has been elected pro- 

 fessor of engineering at University College, 

 Dundee, to succeed Professor Fidler, who has 

 resigned. 



Professor H. Kossel, director of the hy- 

 gienic institute at Giessen, has received a call 

 to Heidelberg. His brother. Dr. A. Kossel, is 

 professor of physiology at Heidelberg. 



Dr. F. Hartmann, of the Astrophysical Ob- 

 servatory at Pottsdam, has been appointed 

 professor of astronomy at Gottingen and di- 

 rector of the observatory. 



DI8OU8SI0N AXD CORRESPONDENCE 



NATURE STUDY 



To THE Editor of Science: In the adver- 

 tisement of a new book on " Nature Study " 

 I find the following statement: 



There is a great deal of talk about nature study 

 by persons who have only the haziest idea of what 

 they mean by it. 



With this I am in cordial agreement. Why 

 the term " nature study " should be appropri- 

 ated as applying to that partial range of the 

 phenomesa of the physical universe which is 

 the particular province of the biologist I have 

 never been able to see. I believe that the 



word <^wns is the equivalent of the Latin 

 natura, for which the English is nature. 

 The derivation of the word physics is appar- 

 ent. The old term " natural philosophy " is 

 an excellent one, sanctioned by the best use 

 from Newton to Thomson and Tait, and serv- 

 ing as a contrast to " natural history " or the 

 purely descriptive part of that science of na- 

 ture which does without philosophy. The 

 term physics is shorter and belongs to other 

 languages than English, and it seems to me 

 that if the biologists desire a correspondingly 

 convenient term it is for them to invent one, 

 and not to preempt the whole of nature, 

 which is greater than any part. 



Arthur Gordon Webster 



neon and electric waves 



To the Editor of Science: Professor J. 

 Norman Collie, F.E.S., recently discovered 

 that when perfectly pure neon is enclosed in a 

 glass tube with a globule of mercury and 

 shaken, it glows with a bright orange-red color, 

 and when the globule rolls it appears to be fol- 

 lowed by a flame. This phenomenon takes 

 place at ordinary pressure. 



Sir William Ramsay has found that neon is 

 the best conducting of the gases and that it 

 readily becomes luminous under the influence 

 of electric waves. Professor J. A. Fleming, 

 F.E.S., uses a neon tube as a detector for the 

 wave-length of Hertzian waves in his appa- 

 ratus for measuring them. 



During a recent visit to Sir William Ram- 

 say I had the pleasure of seeing the astonish- 

 ing quantity of over 500 c.c. of pure neon 

 which he had obtained from about 120 tons of 

 air. While there, Professor Collie very kindly 

 presented to me a tube of neon, under about 

 one half an atmosphere pressure, containing a 

 globule of mercury which showed the " Collie 

 effect " very strikingly. 



Returning from Liverpool, July 2, on the 

 steamer Baltic, I was given opportunity dur- 

 ing the voyage, by Mr. Bates, the chief opera- 

 tor of the wireless, to try the neon tube as an 

 instrument for the visual reading of the wire- 

 less message. We experimented with it dur- 

 ing two nights and found that the neon glowed 

 beautifully in response to the waves sent out, 



