Mat 14, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



485 



A. H. Fuller, director of engineering at 

 Lafayette College, and previously dean of 

 engineering at the Uni-versity of Wasliington, 

 has been appointed head of the civil engineer- 

 ing department of Iowa State College at 

 Ames, and will take up his new duties about 

 the first of July. 



Dr. Otto V. Huffman, who has resigned 

 as dean of the Long Island College Hospital 

 and has resumed practise in itSTew York ftity, 

 has been appointed a member of the faculty 

 of the New York Post Graduate Medical 

 School and Hospital in the department of 

 internal medicine. 



Professor F. B. Isely, of Central College, 

 Payette, Mo., has accepted the position of 

 dean and professor of biology at Culver- Stock- 

 ton College, Canton, Mo., and will begin work 

 in June. 



At Yale University instructors have been 

 appointed as follows: Leonard H. Caldwell, 

 in engineering drawing; Arthur H. Smith, 

 in physiological chemistry; Wilbur Willis 

 Swingle, in biology; J. H. Fithian, Jr., and 

 Howard B. Meek, in mathematics. 



Mr. John B. Ferguson, formerly of the 

 Geophysical Laboratory, of the Carnegie In- 

 stitution of Washington, and now a member 

 of the research department of the Western 

 Electric Company of New York City, has 

 accepted a position as associate professor of 

 chemical research at the University of 

 Toronto. 



Dr. J. H. Andrew, chief of the Metal- 

 lurgical Research Department of Sir W. G. 

 Armstrong, Whitworth, and Co., Manchester, 

 has been appointed to the chair of metallurgy 

 in the Eoyal Technical College, Glasgow, 

 vacant by the transfer of Dr. Desch to the 

 University of Sheffield. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



THE AURORA OF MARCH 22. 1920 



The bright aurora of March 22 was first 

 noticed at Urbana about 7 :00 p.m. It must 

 have developed quickly, for I had glanced over 

 the entire sky looking for clouds at 6 :45, with- 



out noticing anything unusual. Soon after 

 7:00 the illtunination was covering more than 

 half of the sky but it was a couple of hours 

 before the streamers were well marked near 

 the magnetic zenith. This aurora was the 

 longest in duration I have ever noticed at 

 Urbana, as it was followed continuously from 

 7"^ to IS*", and observations of the apparent 

 radiant were made at times during two hours. 

 My assistant, Mr. C. C. Wylie, was also watch- 

 ing the display from a position a quarter of a 

 mile distant from the observatory, and our 

 independent estimates of the apparent radiant 

 or focus of the streamers high up in the south, 

 are given in the table. The times are Central 

 Standard Time, 6 hours slow of Greenwich 

 Mean Time. 



The mean of all estimates differed by only 

 0.°7 from the magnetic zenith, as defined by 

 the magnetic elements for Urbana determined 

 by Mr. Merrymon of the Coast Survey in 

 1917. This agrees with previous results.^ 



The auroral light interfered with our photo- 

 metric observations at the telescope that even- 

 ing, because of the variable bright sky back- 

 ground for any star. A few rough measures 

 gave the result that a patch of auroral 

 streamer equal in apparent area to the full 

 moon gave about as much light as a second 



1 Science, 47, 314, 1918. 



