July 4, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



13 



partment of Forecasts in Buenos Aires; Mr. 

 L. G. Schultz, chief of the magnetic section 

 until 1915 and others. Mr. George O. Wiggin, 

 the present director of the Argentine Meteor- 

 ological Office, is also a native of the United 

 States. 



The high quality of Mr. Davis's work was 

 fully appreciated by his meteorological col- 

 leagues everywhere. His reputation as a me- 

 teorologist and as the successful administra- 

 tive head of a large and remarkably effi.cient 

 organization won for him a position on the 

 International Meteorological Committee, the 

 highest international authority on meteorol- 

 ogy. This was a well-deserved recognition of 

 the importance of his contributions to me- 

 teorology, and of his sound judgment on sci- 

 entific matters. 



The many publications of the Argentine 

 Meteorological Service which were issued 

 under Mr. Davis's direction constitute an in- 

 spiring record of splendid work, well planned, 

 thoroughly organized, and ably carried out. 

 For comparatively few countries are there 

 available such excellent meteorological and 

 climatological publications, some of them in 

 English, as the Argentine Meteorological 

 Service has sent out. 



By the death of Walter Gould Davis the 

 world has lost one of its most eminent meteor- 

 ologists, and those of his colleagues who had 

 the privilege of knowing him have lost a 

 warm-hearted, sympathetic and helpful friend. 

 Egbert DeC. Ward 



, HaEVAED TjNiyEESITT, 



May 31, 1919 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN JAVA 



Official advices received by the State De- 

 partment report that the recent eruption of 

 the Klot (or Kalut) volcano in Java cost 40,- 

 000 native lives, destroyed 20,000 acres of 

 crops, principally rice, by its flow of hot mud, 

 and did millions of dollars' damage by the 

 falling ashes in regions outside the devastated 

 districts. The N'ational Geographic Society 

 has issued from its "Washington headquarters 

 the following bulletin : 



Volcano-made in the first place, and constantly 

 being remade by them, Java has more volcanoes 

 than any area of its size in the world. Estimates 

 of the active and extinct craters range from 100 

 to 150. Everywhere in Java, in the huge crater 

 lakes, in fissures that now are river beds, even in 

 ancient temples, half -finished when interrupted by 

 some fiery convulsion, are evidences of cataclysmic 

 forces — such turbulent forces as now are in con- 

 tinuous hysteria in the Valley of the Ten Thousand 

 Smokes in Alaska and break their crusted surface 

 cage intermittently in Java. 



The "treacherous Klot," as the natives call it, 

 all but wiped out the town of Britar, but even its 

 devastation, as reported to the State Department, 

 was mild compared to the violent upheaval of 

 Krakatoa in 1883. Then mother nature turned 

 ajiarchist and planted a Gargantuan infernal ma- 

 chine on the doorstep of Java. Krakatoa is a 

 little island in the Sunda Strait, between Sumatra 

 and Java. Australians, as far from the explosions 

 as New York is from El Paso, heard the terrific 

 detonation, more than half the island was blotted 

 out, parts of it were flung aloft four times as high 

 as the world's highest mountain, and to touch bot- 

 tom below the water's surface, where most of the 

 island has been, henceforth required a plumb line 

 twice as long as the height of the Washington 

 Monument. Skyscraper waves flooded adjacent is- 

 lands and rolled half way around the earth. Every 

 human ear drum heard, though it may not have 

 registered, the air waves as they vibrated three or 

 four times around the earth. 



Krakatoa levied a smaller toll in human life than 

 Klot because of its isolation, and many of the 35,- 

 000 deaths from Krakatoa 's eruption were at far 

 distant points by drowning. 



An eruption anywhere on the island means dis- 

 aster. For Java, about equal in area to New York 

 state, supports a population greater than the com- 

 bined populations of the empire state and the four 

 other most populous states in the Union — ^Pennsyl- 

 vania, ininois, Ohio and Texas. 



EXPEDITION FROM THE CALIFORNIA MUSEUM 

 OF VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY TO ALASKA 



The museum of vertebrate zoology of the 

 University of California has again under- 

 taken field work in Alaska, and a party to 

 work in that region left the Museum on May 

 14, to be gone ixntil October 1. The route for 

 the present season is to lie in southeastern 

 Alaska in the vicinity of Wrangell. It will 



