390 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1295 



Thus visitors were further able to increase 

 their fund of information regarding wild life 

 by a study of pictures giving full colors, by 

 specimens and by books giving detailed facts. 

 This experiment in making conservation- 

 ists out of " vacationists " proved so success- 

 ful that another year will doubtless see the 

 work expanded and the opportunity to study 

 under a natm'e guide offered to thousands of 

 those on their holidays in all parts of the 

 state. 



A COMPENDIUM OF CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL 

 CONSTANTSl 



Science played so important a role in the 

 war that one of the war's outcomes has been 

 a national stock-taking by each of the principal 

 countries engaged in the struggle of its con- 

 dition, both as regards the scientific knowl- 

 edge and resources already in its possession 

 and the means it has for increasing this knowl- 

 edge. England, Japan and America have all 

 estalblished departments or councils of na- 

 tional scientific research, either supported by 

 government, as in the case of England and 

 Japan, or by private funds, as in the case of 

 our own ISTational Research Council. 



Out of this stock-taking has come the reali- 

 zation that certain scientific knowledge and 

 the means of access to it have been largely in 

 the hands of the Germans, and that other 

 countries have been obliged to rely on Ger- 

 man publications in order to make any use of 

 it at all. A notable instance of this is af- 

 forded by the situation as regards the chem- 

 ical and physical constants so indispensable 

 for precise work in all chemistry and physics 

 and in the application of these sciences to in- 

 dustry. 



The N'ational Research Council, therefore, 

 with the cooperation of the American Chem- 

 ical Society and the American Physical So- 

 ciety has planned to compile and issue a criti- 

 cal American compendiiun of chemical and 

 physical constants which shall be up to date 

 and correct, which, by the way, the German 

 publications were not. And yet these badly or- 

 ganized and inaccurate German compendia 



1 Press bulletin issued by the National Kesearch 

 Council. 



were the only ones available to the American 

 experts during the war in connection with 

 their all-important scientific work on the press- 

 ing problems of war technique. 



This will be a tremendous task and will in- 

 volve the expenditure of at least $100,000 

 which must be obtained from private sources. 

 The committee representing the N'ational Re- 

 search Council and the American Chemical 

 and Physical Societies will have to scour all 

 the university and research laboratories of the 

 country for the needed facts. In addition the 

 committee will attempt to find out from the 

 business and industrial concerns of the coun- 

 try whose work is based on applied chemistry 

 and physics a list of all the constants required 

 in their work, and then will undertake to have 

 these determined by scientific investigators and 

 included in the compendium. A successful 

 outcome of this large undertaking will be of 

 inestimable value to the scientific and ma- 

 terial strength of the nation. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



At the October meeting of the executive 

 board of the National Research Council Pro- 

 fessor Vernon Kellogg, of Stanford Univer- 

 sity, was elected executive secretary of the 

 council. He will hold this position in addi- 

 tion to that of chairman of the council's di- 

 vision of educational relations which he as- 

 sumed last July. Professor Kellogg's work 

 with Mr. Hoover's relief organizations and the 

 Food Administration, which extended from 

 May, 1915, to the present, is now practically 

 at an end, although he remains one of the di- 

 rectors of the American Relief Administration 

 European Children's Fund, which is the one 

 still active organization under Mr. Hoover's 

 direction. 



At its meeting held on October 8, the Rum- 

 ford Committee of the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences voted the following appro- 

 priations: To Professor Frances G. "Wick, of 

 Vassar College, in aid of her researches on the 

 phosphorescence of hexagonite and of fluorite 

 at ordinary and low temperatures, $300; to 

 Professor Robert W. Wood, of the Johns Hop- 



