38C 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1347 



Tlie annual losses because of the attacks on 

 growing and stored crops by insect pests and 

 plant diseases are enormous despite all that 

 has been done to lessen them. A conservative 

 estimate of the loss of wheat in the United 

 States in a single recent year because of the 

 black stem rust is 180,000,000 bushels, and this 

 pest is but one of the many that attack the 

 wheat every year. What is needed is a com- 

 bination and concentration of attack on these 

 pests. The new Crop Protection Institute 

 will help to bring this about. It is not 

 intended that the institute will interfere with 

 or duplicate existing efforts now being made 

 by government bureaus, state experiment sta- 

 tions and other agencies to fight crop .pests, 

 but that it will introduce a more general co- 

 operation in the work and give special atten- 

 tion to filling important gaps that nov7 exist 

 in it. 



The N"ational Eesearch Council has issued 

 a list of references to investigations upon the 

 production of corn and its uses, prepared by 

 M. Helen Keith, of the Illinois Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. The list includes over 

 1,300 articles which have been published 

 within recent years in this country and 

 abroad. These investigations cover a wide 

 range of problems such as the breeding and 

 growing of com as affecting its yield and 

 nutritive qualities, the curing of corn and the 

 preparation of silage, the systematic feeding 

 of farm animals, the physiology of corn nutri- 

 tion, including its relation to pellagra, the 

 chemical composition of corn, and the ex- 

 traction of such products as iodine, chloro- 

 form, oils, alcohol and benzine. Altogether 

 the list shows that the scientific investigation 

 of all phases of corn problems has become ex- 

 ceedingly extended and important. 



THE PROPOSED EXPEDITION TO ASIA OF THE 

 AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 



Announcement has been made of an expe- 

 dition to be sent out by The American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History in cooperation with 

 the American Asiatic Association and Asia 

 Magazine, the object of which is to search for 

 the most primitive human remains. It will 



work for five years in various remote regions 

 of central Asia and vsdll be under the direc- 

 tion and leadership of Mr. Hoy Chapman 

 Andrews, associate curator of mammals in 

 The American Museum of Natural History, 

 who for the last ten years has been carrying 

 on zoological explorations in various parts of 

 the Par East. The expedition will be financed 

 by a fund of $250,000, which is being pro- 

 vided by The Ajnerican Museum of Natural 

 History, The American Asiatic Association 

 and Asia Magazine, and the private subscrip- 

 tions of Mrs. Willard Straight, Messrs. J. P. 

 Morgan, George P. Baker, Childs Prick, W. A. 

 Harriman and Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Bern- 

 heimer. 



In the year 1891, a Dutch army surgeon, 

 Eugene Dubois, while excavating for fossils in 

 central Java, discovered near Trinil part of a 

 skull, two molar teeth and a thigh bone. This 

 discovery has been supplemented by that of 

 other indisputably human remains of which 

 the most ancient, fotmd in southern Ger- 

 many, is the jaw of the so-called Heidelberg 

 man who may be two hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand years old. 



With the exception of the Java specimen, 

 all fossil human fragments have been dis- 

 covered in Europe or England. It is, however, 

 believed, that whatever light may be thrown 

 upon the origin of man will come from the 

 great Asian plateau. 



Leaving about the first of next Pebruary, 

 headquarters for the expedition will be estab- 

 lished in Peking. The first year will be de- 

 voted to studies in paleontology and zoology 

 in China; the second year the work will be 

 carried into Mongolia and a geologist will be 

 added to the field staff; the third, fourth and 

 fifth years archeologists and anthropologists 

 will be sent out who with the zoologists and 

 paleontologists will carry on work in various 

 parts of Asia. 



The importance of this region long has 

 been recognized, but no systematic study on a 

 large scale ever has been attempted, and there 

 is no similar area of the inhabited surface of 

 the earth about which so little is known. 

 Whether or not human remains are found it 



