April 9, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



369 



tliree students, wlio all went to work vigor- 

 ously. Last year I hired several assistants, 

 and when I returned from France I had to put 

 my hand in my pocket. That is I borrowed 

 money at six per cent. This method of high 

 finance may do for high trajectories, but it 

 can not continue forever. I hear much of the 

 National Research Council, but I do not see 

 any money. I am an elderly man, and have 

 experienced three disillusionments connected 

 with the names of great millionaires. " Timeo 

 Danaos et dona ferentes " — I fear organiza- 

 tions even when they offer me money — much 

 more when they don't! Last year I gave a 

 paper at the American Philosophical Society 

 on the work of our ballistic institute, but I 

 have never had the time to have it published. 

 I did not get to the front in the war — not till 

 last summer. I had no uniform, and few help- 

 ers. So I got no glory, but some debts. A 

 propos of Professor Wilson's letter about the 

 University of Strasbourg, I should like to say 

 that I visited it last year, and was shown all 

 over it, and that the French are making it 

 first class. Professor Pierre "Weiss is going to 

 have the best facilities in the world for the 

 study of magnetism. I made about two hun- 

 dred and fifty lantern slides of the places vis- 

 ited by our mission, and have been giving lec- 

 tures lOn it ever since. Strasbourg figures 

 largely in them. 



Arthur Gordox "Webster 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



KNOWLTON'S CATALOGUE OF FOSSIL PLANTS" 



In 189S Dr. Knowlton published " A Cata- 

 logue of the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants of 

 iN'orth America." "We now have from the same 

 pen a work with the very similar title of " A 

 Catalogue of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Plants 

 of North America." This is a far more com- 

 prehensive work than the former, or than its 

 title indicates. To say that it about doubles 

 the number of known species is but a slight 

 indication of the way in which it mirrors the 

 progress that paleobotany has made in Amer- 



1 Bulletin U. 8. Geological Survey, No. 696, 815 

 pp., 1919 (1920). 



ioa in the past twenty years, for while very 

 many significant new forms are added, many 

 others that existed in name only have disap- 

 peared from -the literature. Botanical determi- 

 nations in many cases have been placed on a 

 firmer footing during the interval and geolog- 

 ical occurrences are now given with much 

 |greater precision, in fact, in so far as the 

 progress of stratigraphie and areal geology is 

 concerned with plant-^bearing units, the present 

 work may be said to show the progress made in 

 Stratigraphy during the past two decades. 



Only those who know the drudgery of such 

 compilations can appreciate the vast labor that 

 has gone into the making of this book. The 

 author has been one of the most influential fac- 

 tors in the progress of paleobotany in this 

 country during the present generation and that 

 he should have found the time to place this 

 epitome of its present sitatus before the public 

 is a cause for sincere congratulation, not alone 

 to him but to all who may have occasion to 

 refer to the work. Fellow geologists will prob- 

 ably not need to have its merits or usefulness 

 called to their attention, but botanists are not 

 so likely to scan the lists of publications of the 

 U. S. Geological Survey. 



There is a stratigraphie table, a bibliography, 

 followed by the body of the catalogue arranged 

 alphabetically. In this part references are 

 given to the original description of each genus, 

 type species are indicated and under each spe- 

 cies the synonymy, principal citations and geo- 

 logical and geographical distribution are given. 

 Following the body of the catalogue, the in- 

 cluded genera are given in their biological ar- 

 rangement. This is followed by iloral lists for 

 each of the North American Mesozoic and Cen- 

 ozoic plant bearing formations — Si most useful 

 feature of wide interest. 



Edward "W. Berry 



NOTES ON METEOROLOGY 



THE WEST INDIAN HURRICANE OF SEPTEMBER, 



1919 



This hurricane, which seems to have been 

 the largest that has occurred in the Gulf of 

 Mexico since the U. S. "Weather service was 



