598 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 955 



National Conference on Marketing and Farm 

 Credits, held in Chicago on April 8. 



The New York Academy of Sciences will 

 hold a reception on April 21, when an illus- 

 trated lecture will be given by Professor 

 Bergen Davis, of Columbia University, on 

 " Electricity as Revealed by its Passage 

 through Gases." The lecture will be followed 

 by a reception. 



OsCAE Dana Allen, whose death has been 

 noted in Science, was born in Maine in 1836. 

 In 1871 he was elected professor of metallurgy 

 in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Uni- 

 versity. In 1874 he was also made professor 

 of analytical chemistry. Prolonged ill health 

 obliged him to resign these two positions in 

 1887, when he moved to California for four 

 years. After that he lived at what is now 

 called Ashford, a remote place situated at the 

 base of Mount Eanier in Washington. There 

 he devoted himself to horticulture, botany and 

 biology, making the flora of the mountain 

 near which he lived his special study. 



De. Bela Lengyel, professor of chemistry 

 at Budapesth, has died at the age of fifty-nine 

 years. 



Dr. Eduard Schmitt, formerly professor of 

 engineering in the Darmstadt Technical 

 School, has died at the age of seventy-one 

 years. 



A SITE of about seven acres, in the District 

 of Columbia and near Rock Creek Park, has 

 been purchased by the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington to provide the necessary facilities 

 for the office and experimental work of the 

 Department of Terestrial Magnetism. The 

 building to be erected is to embrace the office, 

 laboratory and instrument shop; according to 

 present expectations, it will be ready for occu- 

 pancy early in 1914. 



TliE magnetic survey yacht Carnegie left 

 St. Helena on April 9, bound for Bahia, and 

 is expected to return to her home port at the 

 end of the year, thus completing the three 

 years' circumnavigation cruise. On the trip 

 from Coronel, Chile, to Port Stanley, Falk- 

 land Islands, made in December and January 

 last, she encountered an exceptionally smooth 



passage in rounding the Horn. However, on 

 her run from the Falkland Islands to St. 

 Helena, February 22 to April 3, twenty-three 

 icebergs were sighted. The vessel is in com- 

 mand, as heretofore, of Mr. W. J. Peters. 



The annual report of the National Academy 

 of Sciences shows that appropriations from 

 the Bache fund amounting to $2,000 were 

 made as follows : 



J. A. Parkhurst, Yerkes Observatory, Williams 

 Bay, Wis., for the determination by photographic 

 methods of the visual and photographic magni- 

 tudes and the spectral types of faint stars, $500. 



M. A. EosanofE, Clark University, Worcester, 

 Mass., for the determination of the several factors 

 that influence the velocity of sugar hydrolysis, 

 $500. 



S. C. Chandler, Wellesley Hills, Mass., for the 

 definitive discussion of the latitude variation from 

 1725 to the present time, $350. 



F. B. Sumner, additional grant for the contin- 

 uation of experiments on the effects of external 

 conditions on growing white mice, $150. 



T. A. Mann, Concord, N. H., for the determina- 

 tion of the cause and mode of spread of septic 

 sore throat, $100. 



S. F. Acree, Johns Hopkins University, Balti- 

 more, Md., for the completion of the study of the 

 action of alkyl halides on sodium phenolate, $500. 



E. H. Hall, Harvard University, for the study 

 of the electromagnetic and thermomagnetic be- 

 havior of metals, $500. 



One of the last official acts of President 

 Taft was the signing of a proclamation elim- 

 inating 41,150 acres from the Kansas Na- 

 tional Forest. The tract eliminated is in the 

 extreme western section of the forest, and 

 includes all that part which lies west of the 

 fifth guide meridian. It is principally a 

 sandhill • country and while it could be re- 

 forested, there is such a large proportion of 

 alienated or privately owned land within the 

 forest boundaries that the government's re- 

 forestation work would have to be confined to 

 more or less isolated areas. Since the area is 

 valuable for grazing, its restoration to the 

 public domain was deemed advisable. At the 

 same time that the land was eliminated from 

 the forest it was withdrawn from entry, under 

 the authority which congress has given the 



