January 23, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



83 



ment. All present agreed that the disease is the 

 most serious one known to the rubber industry, that 

 treatment alone was too expensive, and that meth- 

 ods of prevention should be disoovered if possible. 



Later at a special meetiug an experiment was 

 planned by Messrs. Rands, Maas, Keuohenius and 

 La Rue to test more fully whether or not the dis- 

 ease may have a physiological cause. After visit- 

 ing a number of rubber estates on the east coast of 

 Sumatra and in Atjeh, Drs. van Hall and Rands 

 returned to Java. 



The first technical meeting of the personnel of 

 the experiment stations for the rubber culture was 

 held in Budtenzorg, Java, on November 1, 1919. 

 Representatives of the Central Rubber Proefsta- 

 tion, the West-Java Proefstation, the Malang 

 Proefstation, the Besoeki Proefstation, the Labora- 

 torium voor Plantenziekten, and the research de- 

 partment of the Holland Plantations Company. 



Among the subjects discussed were brown bast 

 dise-ase, mildew-diseases of leaves, borers, thinning 

 put of trees on estates, and selection. The last 

 topic is only now beginning to be a matter of con- 

 cern to rubber planters, although experiment sta- 

 tion workers have been interested in ii for several 

 years. 



EXPERIMENT STATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF 

 MINES 



In connection with, the work of the Bureau 

 of Mines, Department of the Interior, the bu- 

 reau is now conducting eleven mining experi- 

 ment stations, located in the various mining 

 centers of the country, and bending their ener- 

 gies toward the special mining problems that 

 are local to their part of the country. So 

 great has been the demand for knowledge con- 

 cerning the character of the work nndertaken 

 at these various mining stations and its 

 general relation to the mining industry, the 

 bureau has issued a bulletin describing the 

 work of the stations. Dr. Van H. Manning, 

 director of the bureau, isketches the work of 

 the different stations as follows : 



The station at Columbus, Ohio, situaited at a clay- 

 working center is employed mostly on ceramic prob- 

 lems. In this counjtry there are about 4,000 firms 

 manufacturing clay products, including brick, tUe, 

 sewer pipe, conduits, hollow blocks, architectural 

 terra cotta, porcelain, earthenware, china and art 

 pottery. The amount invested in these industries 

 is approximately $375,000,000 and the value of the 

 products exceeds $208,000,000 annually. 



The station at Bartlesville, Okla., is investigating 

 problems that arise in the proper utilization of oil 

 and gas resources, such as elimination of waste of 

 oil and natural gas, improvements in drilling and 

 easing wells, prevention of water troubles at wells, 

 and of waste in storing and refining petroleum, 

 and the recovery of gasoline from natural gas. 



What the Bureau of Mines has done for the great 

 coal-mining industry, chiefly through investiga- 

 tions ait the experiment station at Pittsburgh, Pa., 

 has been published ia numerous reports issued by 

 the bureau. Some of the more important accom- 

 plishments have been the development and intro- 

 duction of permissible explosives for use in gaseous 

 mines, the training of thousands of coal miners in 

 mine-rescue and first-aid work, and the conducting 

 of combustion investigations, aimed at increased 

 efficiency in the burning of coal and the effective 

 utOization of our vast deposits of lignite and low- 



The Salt Lake City station has devised novel 

 methods of treating certain low-grade and com- 

 plex ores of lead and zinc. These methods show a 

 large saving of metal over methods hitherto em- 

 ployed, and have made available ores that other 

 methods could mot treat profitably. 



The Seattle station is busy with the beneficia- 

 tion of the low-grade ores of the Northwest, and 

 the mining and utilization of the coals of the 

 Pacific states; the Tucson station is working on 

 the benefieiation of low-grade copper ores; and the 

 Berkeley station has shown how losses may be re- 

 duced at quicksilver plants and how methods at 

 those plants can be improved. 



In the conduct of these investigations the bu- 

 reau seeks and is obtaining the cooperation of the 

 mine operators. At more than a dozen mills in the 

 west engineers from the stations are working di- 

 rectly with the mill men on various problems, and 

 the results they already have obtained more than 

 warrant the existence of the stations. Success in 

 solving one problem may easily be worth millions 

 to the country. Mining men are using these sta- 

 tions more and more freely as they realize that tihe 

 government maintains these stations to help them, 

 and that the difficulties of the operators, both 

 large and small, will receive sympathetic consid- 

 eration and such aid as the stations can give. 



GRANTS FOR RESEARCH OF THE AMERICAN 



ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT 



OF SCIENCE 



At the St. Louis meeting of the association, 

 the council assigned the sum of $4,500 to be 

 expended by the Committee on Grants for 



