674 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 957 



igneous rock to fairly represent the volcanic 

 ash, which is another large part of the abys- 

 mal clay, a meter thick would contain 192.5 

 tons of nickel extra per square kilometer. It 

 would take 8,700 years to accumulate this ex- 

 tra 192.5 tons of nickel in a meter at the rate 

 of 20,000 grams per year. Now the red clay 

 has, certainly, formed very slowly, as shown by 

 the abundance of sharks' teeth and whales' ear 

 bones, as well as the manganese and meteor 

 dust.' The man in the world best qualified to 

 guess in an after-dinner conversation ex- 

 pressed to me his guess that 500 feet of the 

 red clay would represent all geologic time. 

 At the above rate, 500 feet, i. e., 152.5 meters, 

 would equal 13,000,000 years. Now this is of 

 the order of the figures of other estimates of 

 the earth's age, suggestively near to other 

 short estimates, when we see that we have 

 taken Pickering's maximum estimate of the 

 size of meteors. If we took Pickering's 

 smaller figures for the size of the meteorites, 

 we could get estimates of age as great as the 

 larger estimates of the age of the earth. 



My object, at this time, is to urge the mem- 

 bers of the talked-of Arctic and Antarctic ex- 

 peditions, or, in fact, any one in snowy cli- 

 mates, to complete Nordenskj old's observa- 

 tions by finding the amount of cosmic dust in 

 a large amount of snow, accumulated in a 

 known time, determined by annual rings or 

 otherwise. It may, also, be well to test espe- 

 cially for the amount of nickel in strata which 

 are thought to have formed very slowly. 



I have no doubt, also, that within this cen- 

 tury, there will be drilled a hole in the bottom 

 of the sea which will give us the other datum 

 to be determined. 



Alfred C. Lane 



Tufts College, Mass. 



TEE MILWAUKEE MEETING OF THE 

 AMESICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 



Although the Ameriean Chemical Society- 

 changed its time of meeting from winter to spring 

 there was no falling off in the attendance at the 

 Milwaukee meeting, for in spite of the distance 



'Bull. Mus. Boyal, 1884, p. 35. "Sediment de 

 Mer Prof ounde. ' ' 



from many of the local sections some four hun- 

 dred members gathered for the meeting, as well as 

 thirty guests. 



The council meeting was held on Monday eve- 

 ning, March 24, and it was voted that the next 

 meeting should be held in Rochester, New York, 

 early in September. Other business of a general 

 character was considered and the reports of all 

 committees received. 



On Tuesday morning the following four papers 

 were given in general session, and with the excep- 

 tion of the last were fuUy illustrated: 



Joel H. Hildebrand: "Some Applications of 

 the Hydrogen Electrode in Instruction, Analysis 

 and Eesearch. ' ' 



D. M. Buck: "Copper in Steel. The Influence 

 on Corrosion." 



H. E. Howe: "Some Projection Experiments 

 with Spectra. ' ' 



Wilder D. Bancroft: "The Theory of Emul- 

 sions. ' ' 



On Tuesday afternoon excursions were held to 

 the plant of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company, 

 to the gas and coke plant; and the works of the 

 Pfister & Vogel Leather Company and the VUter 

 Manufacturing Company were also open to the 

 members. 



In the evening a complimentary smoker was held 

 in the Pern Boom of the Hotel Pfister, at which 

 Mayor Bading of Milwaukee was present. 



On Wednesday there were meetings at Mar- 

 quette University of the Agricultural and Food 

 Division, the Biological Chemistry Division, Indus- 

 trial Chemists and Chemical Engineers, the Phar- 

 maceutical Chemistry Division, the Physical and 

 Inorganic Chemistry Division and the Rubber Sec- 

 tion. 



On Wednesday evening Professor Julius Stieg- 

 litz, of Chicago, gave a public lecture on "Com- 

 bustion, ' ' which was largely attended by the mem- 

 bers as well as by the citizens of Milwaukee, prob- 

 ably eight hundred people being present. 



On Thursday the meetings of the Divisions con- 

 tinued and the Organic Chemistry and Fertilizer 

 Divisions also met. 



In the afternoon excursions were taken to 

 Pabst Brewing Company and the Pfister & Vogel 

 Leather Company and in the evening a subscrip- 

 tion dinner was held at the Hotel Pfister. 



On Friday seventy-five of the members went by 

 special train to Madison, Wisconsin, where they 

 were received by committees of the Wisconsin Sec- 

 tion of the American Chemical Society and con- 



