534 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1380 



State Medical Boards of the United States, 

 and formerly dean of the Long Island College 

 Hospital; treasurer, Dr. George W. Kosmak, 

 attending surgeon of the Lying-in Hospital, 

 and formerly secretary of the American Asso- 

 ciation of Obstetricians. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



A DORMITORY for foreign students at Co- 

 liunbia University and other schools in !New 

 York has been made possible through a gift 

 promised to members of the Cosmopolitan 

 Club, an organization of students in Colum- 

 bia and New York University. Plans for the 

 dormitory provide for a building of 500 rooms 

 to be erected at a cost approximating 

 $1,000,000, on Riverside Drive opposite Grant's 

 tomb. The newspapers report that the donor 

 is John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 



Dr. F. S. Harris, director and agronomist of 

 the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station and 

 professor of agronomy at the Utah Agricul- 

 tural College, has resigned to become president 

 of the Brigham Young University, at Prove, 

 Utah, where he succeeds Dr. George H. Brim- 

 hall, who has been made president emeritus. 

 Professor Wm. Peterson, station geologist and 

 professor of geology in the college, has been 

 appointed to succeed Dr. Harris as director of 

 the station. 



Dr. iN'ATHAN Fasten, who went to the Ore- 

 gon Agricultural College last September from 

 the University of Washington, has been pro- 

 moted to the headship of the department of 

 zoology. 



Dr. John W. M. Bunker, who has been for 

 several years at the head of the bacteriological 

 department of the Digestive Ferments Com- 

 pany of Detroit, has been elected assistant pro- 

 fessor of biochemistry and physiology at the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



CONCERNING RECENT AURORAS, MAY 13 AND 

 MAY 14, 1921 



To THE Editor or Science : On the evening 

 of May 13, 1921, there occurred a great aurora. 



not visible here on account of clouds, but 

 again on the evening of May 14 there was 

 another great display visible here in spite of 

 the half moon and a low-lying fog which 

 tended to spoil the visibility. As in other 

 great auroras, the great bundles of streamers 

 appeared to converge toward the zenith from 

 the south as well as from the north, east and 

 west. The sky at times was virtually covered 

 with auroral light. The outburst of May 13 

 caused great disturbance to telegraph and 

 telephone wire transmission and must have 

 been of unusual magnitude. All the effects 

 noted in the aurora of May 14 a day later 

 conformed to the perspective ideas, pointed 

 out in my paper, " Inferences concerning au- 

 roras," read at the Boston meeting of the 

 !N"ational Academy of Sciences on November 

 14, 1916, and published in its Proceedings, 

 Vol. 3, pp. 1-7, January, 1917. 



It is rarely that one great aurora follows 

 so closely on the heels of another and at an 

 interval so short as a day. In fact I have no 

 record or recollection of such a happening in 

 my time of observation, which now extends 

 over fifty years, more or less. Hence the con- 

 ditions lead to the inquiry whether any un- 

 usual condition existed in this instance. 



An examination of the solar surface ap- 

 pears to provide, or at least suggest, a possible 

 explanation, and at the same time throw light 

 on the nature of the relation of the aurora to 

 the solar disturbances. 



On May 15 there were to be seen on the 

 solar surface two large spot areas, separated 

 by an interval of about one-fourteenth of the 

 diameter of the sun, the one following the 

 other as the sun revolved. These two spot 

 areas, quite distinct from each other, were 

 nearly round, the first a single spot, the sec- 

 ond a compact group with a much disturbed 

 area adjacent. They were located near the 

 center of the solar disc. 



As the solar revolution takes place in nearly 

 26 days, the interval letween the spots appears 

 to he approximately one day of the surface 

 movement. 



This means that in about one day the sec- 



