October 22, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



385 



West, Florida, at $1,800 a year, and the other 

 at Beaufort, N. C, at $1,500 a year, each 

 with a possible bonus of $20 a month. Com- 

 petitors are not required to report for exami- 

 nation at any place, but will be rated on 

 physical ability, education and experience. 

 Further information may be obtained by ap- 

 plication to the Civil Service Commission, 

 Washin^on, D. C. 



Natural History, the journal of the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History, says the 

 largest and most mysterious land animal 

 known in the world to-day has been named 

 BaluchUherium osborni by its discoverer, C 

 Forster Cooper, now curator in the University 

 Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, England. 

 The animal is like neither an elephant, nor a 

 rhinoceros, nor a titanothere, nor a moropus. 

 Mr. Cooper wri*.es that the ankle bone is cer- 

 tainly that of a perissodaetyl and seems nearer 

 to the rhinoceros than anything else. A giant 

 primitive rhinoceros tooth, ten centimeters 

 across, has been found, which indicates the 

 presence of rhinoceroses of gigantic size in the 

 Bugti beds of Baluchistan in Oligocene times, 

 which was a strange faunal period. The 

 BaluchUherium, if a rhinoceros, certainly had 

 a very long neck, more like that of a gigantic 

 giraffe than that of a horse. Two of the an- 

 terior vertebrse of this monster have recently 

 been received in the American Museum and 

 have been compared with all our large land 

 animals, living and extinct, with no result. 

 These neck verteibraa dwarf those of all the 

 largest land animals. The Bugti beds, which 

 have been explored by Cooper and by Pil- 

 grim, also yield a hornless rhinoceros, 

 Paraceratherium, in which the lower incisor 

 teeth are turned downward; a hippopotamus 

 that is typical except that it lacks front teeth ; 

 and a beautiful anthracothere called Gelas- 

 modon. This gives us a glimpse into the still 

 unknown mammalian life of southwest India. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



Plans are now being prepared for a new 

 building for the department of chemistry of 



Yale University, which has hitherto carried 

 on its work partly in the Kent Chemical Lab- 

 oratory and partly in the Sheffield Chemical 

 La'boratory. According to present plans, the 

 new building will be located on the Pierson- 

 Sage Square, just north of the Sloane Physics 

 Laboratory. It will have a total floor area of 

 100,000 square feet; and, in addition to the 

 usual laboratories and recitation rooms, will 

 include an ample number of rooms for re- 

 search work. 



Dr. George Blumer, who resigned last 

 spring from the deanship of the Yale Medi-' 

 cal School, will serve for this year as clinical 

 professor of medicine. Dr. Wilder Tileston 

 will be associated with him with the same 

 title, and Dr. Edward H. Hume, the dean of 

 the medical school of Yale-in-China, who is 

 on leave of ahsence in this country, will serve 

 as visiting professor of medicine. 



Dr. G, H. Woollett, of the University of 

 Minnesota, has been elected associate pro- 

 fessor of chemistry at the University of Miss- 

 issippi. Dr. Woollett was formerly connected 

 with the University of Mississippi. Dr. Vic- 

 tor A. Coulter, who served as a gas officer in 

 France, has been elected assistant professor of 

 chemistry in the same institution. 



After .serving for twenty-five years as head 

 of the department of horticulture and entomol- 

 ogy, and eleven years as head of the depart- 

 ment of entomology, of Purdue University 

 and Experiment Station, Professor James 

 Troop now relinquishes his position in the 

 experiment station and will devote his time to 

 teaching in the school of agriculture. Pro- 

 fessor John J. Davis, formerly with the 

 United States Bureau of Entomology is now 

 head of the department at Purdue. 



At the University of Chicago Dr. Lester R. 

 Dragstet has been appointed assistant pro- 

 fessor of physiology andi William Berry in- 

 structor in psychology. 



Dr. a. B. Macallum, administrative chair- 

 man of the Eeseareh Council of Canada, has 

 been elected to the new chair of biochemistry 



