316 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 166. 



termination of the San Jos6 scale, peach yellows, 

 pear blight and other injurious insect pests and 

 plant diseases, and to create the offices of State 

 Entomologist, State Vegetable Pathologist and 

 State Horticulturist, and to appropriate a sum 

 of money therefor. The professors of ento- 

 mology, vegetable pathology and horticulture 

 of the Maryland Agricultural College and the 

 Experiment Station shall be the State officers 

 and the department shall be under the control 

 of the State Agricultural College, to whom the 

 State officers shall be responsible. Notice, in 

 writing, of infection is to be given to owners, 

 and if not attended to after ten days the State 

 officers shall act and the cost be added to the 

 tax bill and collected as is other taxation. All 

 nurseries of the State are to be inspected at 

 least once in six months, and where found 

 apparently free from insect pests and disease 

 the owners shall be given certificates to such 

 effect. Both Entomologist and Pathologist must 

 make an annual report of inspection to the 

 Governor of the State, this to be published as 

 a Bulletin of the Experiment Station. The ap- 

 propriation asked for carrying this into effect 

 is $8,000 for the first year and $6,000 for each 

 year after. Attention was also called to the 

 ' clause ' in the Game Law, which will permi 

 boys to shoot robins, larks, doves and flickers 

 at any time, and a resolution was unanimously 

 adopted that ' members of the State Legislature 

 be invoked to reject that section of the resolu- 

 tion which refers to these birds;' also, that the 

 insectivorous birds shall be named, and their 

 being killed or offered for sale shall be counted 

 a misdemeanor and made punishable by fine.'' 

 The Electrical World gives a summary of a re- 

 port in the Elektrische Zeitschrift of the work in 

 electricity of the German Keichsanstalt during 

 the past two years. Much work was done in 

 connection with the standard ohm, and this may 

 now be considered concluded, the determination 

 of the ohm for that institution being now as. 

 sured. Comparisons were made to determine 

 the constancy of the wire and mercury secondary 

 standards ; these have been repeatedly com- 

 pared, and gave very good results, as before ; 

 those of wire are almost all of manganin and 

 show that this material, besides having a very 

 small temperature coefficient, has a very good 



constancy, and is therefore well suited for ex- 

 act measurements. Under standard cells it is 

 stated that both the Clark and Weston cells 

 were carefully examined, and the previous re- 

 sults were confirmed that the cells are constant 

 and reproducible to 1 in 10,000 ; the depend- 

 ence of the voltage of the cadmium cell on the 

 composition of the amalgam was also investi- 

 gated, also the effect of warming the cells. An 

 absolute determination of the Clark cell was 

 made with the Helmholtz electro-dynamom- 

 eter, it being a repetition of the previous one ; 

 the results differed by less than 1 in 1,000 from 

 the values obtained with the silver voltameter 

 and showed that the absolute measurements of 

 current agreed with those made by other 

 methods. The determination of the E. M. F. 

 of the Clark cell with the silver voltameter 

 showed the difficulties involved, and if these 

 are not taken into account the results are un- 

 certain to 1 in 1,000. The magnetization of 

 iron and steel in weak fields was investigated, 

 and with annealed and hard cast steel and with 

 cast iron a straight line relation was found, 

 while for hard and soft wrought iron the rela- 

 tion was not so simple. The electric conduc- 

 tivity of solutions was also examined, and the 

 results show that the electric current is very 

 suitable for scientific research with solutions 

 and in chemistry, being in some respects supe- 

 rior to other methods in analyses. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 



University Day at the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, annually celebrated on Washington's 

 Birthday, was this year the occasion of an ad- 

 dress by President McKinley, who reviewed 

 the services of Washington to the nation and 

 to education aud the importance of education 

 to national life. 



CoMMEMOEATiON Day was also celebrated at 

 Johns Hopkins University on Washington's 

 Birthday. In the course of an address Presi- 

 dent Gilman said that, in accordance with the 

 wishes of many of its friends and supporters, 

 taxpayers and citizens of Maryland, the Johns 

 Hopkins University has decided to present a 

 statement of its financial condition to the Legis- 

 lature of Maryland to ask for State aid. 

 Through the failure of the Baltimore and Ohio 



