552 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1381 



permanence should be given the project before 

 its formal undertaking. 



John M. Clarke, 

 Henry S. Graves, 

 Barrington Moore, 

 Committee on Program 

 JuBe 3, 1921 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



THE INCREASING USE OF UNITED STATES 

 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY MAPS 



The project of covering the 3,000,000 square 

 miles of the United States v^ith accurate 

 topographic surveys was definitely adopted by 

 the federal government in 1882. The project 

 was large, and the work is even now less than 

 half completed. The standards of accuracy 

 and refinement in topographic surveying have 

 been constantly raised by the topographic en- 

 gineers of the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey, Department of the Interior, with the 

 view of meeting adequately every use to which 

 the maps can be put. The law provides for the 

 sale of the maps made by the Geological Sur- 

 vey at the cost of printing, a charge that must 

 be considered merely nominal when it is re- 

 alized that the cost of an edition of a printed 

 map may be only a small percentage of the 

 cost of surveying the area it represents. 



The government itself is making a large 

 and increasing use of these topographic maps, 

 but the expenditure of public funds for these 

 surveys is otherwise fully warranted only as 

 the public uses the maps. To promote this use, 

 the Geological Survey has recently given more 

 attention to the wider distribution of the 

 maps. 



The distribution of a government map de- 

 pends largely upon publicity, though the ne- 

 cessity of adopting commercial business meth- 

 ods in handling orders for the maps when a 

 demand is created must not be overlooked. To 

 inform the public of the existence of authori- 

 tative maps published by the federal govern- 

 ment a special effort is now being made to 

 reach the communities in every area that is 

 covered by a map, and to this end every map 

 as issued is brought to the attention of the 

 local and state press. 



Other methods of promoting wider distribu- 



tion involve the cooperation of boy-scout mas- 

 ters, schoolboys, and hotel managers, as well 

 as of a large number of bookstores as local 

 agents. Helpful publicity has also been gained 

 through the voluntary cooperation of the press. 

 The printing in a single publication of a brief 

 statement regarding the Geological Survey's 

 maps often results in orders for a hundred or 

 more maps and many inquiries for the State 

 index maps, which are sent free, showing the 

 areas already mapped. 



The periods of maximum demand for these 

 government maps are the beginning of the va- 

 cation period and the beginning of the school 

 year. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY CON VERS AZIONE.i 



The annual conversazione of the Royal So- 

 ciety was held at Burlington House on May 11, 

 and was so well attended that it was practically 

 impossible to see a tenth part of the exhibits 

 and demonstrations. Fortunately arrange- 

 ments are always made for an earlier press 

 view of the latter. This year amongst the 

 thirty-nine demonstrations figuring in the cat- 

 alogue there was none having any direct bear- 

 ing on medical science, though the exhibition 

 contained much of great general interest. Mr. 

 L. T. Hogben, of the Imperial College of 

 Science, demonstrated the effects on tadpoles 

 of feeding them with pineal gland. Hitherto 

 there has been no proof of any physiological 

 function exercised by the pineal body, but Mr. 

 Hogben has succeeded in showing, in tadpoles 

 at least, that it has some controlling power 

 over the pigment cells. Macroscopic and mi- 

 croscopic preparations showed that in the 

 pineal-fed tadpoles there is a very evident con- 

 traction of the melanophores, an effect that 

 is not produced by feeding experiments with 

 any other endocrine organ. Mr. C. Tate 

 Regan, F.R.S., gave a demonstration of part 

 of the life-history of the common eel, founded 

 on the researches of Dr. J. Schmidt, who 

 showed that the freshwater eel of Europe 

 breeds in the Atlantic, southeast of Bermuda. 

 A series of larvae, from the middle and western 

 North Atlantic, with long and slender pointed 



1 From The British Medical Journal. 



