September 22, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



421 



Professor Charles Smith Prosser, head of 

 the department of geology of the Ohio State 

 University, has died at the age of fifty-six 

 years. His body was found in the Olentangy 

 River, near the university campus, on Septem- 

 ber 18. Dr. Prosser received his bachelor's, 

 master's and doctor's degree at Cornell Uni- 

 versity and was instructor in paleontology 

 there. Later he was paleontologist of the U. 

 S. Geological Survey and professor at Wash- 

 burn and Union Colleges, going to the Ohio 

 State University in 1899. He was the author 

 of important contributions to stratigraphical 

 geology and paleontology. 



William Esson, since 1897 Savillian pro- 

 fessor of geometry at the University of Oxford, 

 has died at the age of eighty-eight years. 



S. B. MacLaren, professor of mathematics 

 in University College, Reading, died on Au- 

 gust 14, as the result of wounds, while serving 

 in the corps of engineers of the British army. 



Dr. C. C. Clough, of the Scottish Geolog- 

 ical Survey, died on August 27, aged sixty- 

 three years. 



We learn from Nature that Captain A. R. 

 Brown, formerly science master at Buck- 

 haven High Grade School, and Second Lieu- 

 tenant H. Watson, mathematical master at 

 Ormskirk Grammar School, have both been 

 killed in action. 



Dr. A. Charpentier, professor of medical 

 physics at Nancy, has died suddenly in his 

 sixty-fifth year. 



Dr. Walter Zurhellen, formerly an assist- 

 ant director of the National Astronomical Ob- 

 servatory at Santiago, Chili, is, according to a 

 wireless dispatch from Berlin, dead as a result 

 of wounds received on the battlefield. 



Two offices in the health department of the 

 District of Columbia are created by Congress 

 in the appropriation bill enacted September 

 1. A chief medical and sanitary inspector is 

 to be appointed, who, under direction of the 

 health officer, is to give his whole time to, and 

 exercise direction and control of, the medical 

 and sanitary conditions of the public schools. 



at a salary of $2,500 a year. He will assume 

 charge of the thirteen medical inspectors and 

 five graduate nurses now in the service. A 

 chief food inspector, at $1,800 a year, is au- 

 thorized to have general supervision and con- 

 trol of the food inspection service, comprising 

 seventeen subordinate inspectors. 



In central Alaska south of the Yukon River 

 there is a large area which prior to 1915 was 

 practically unknown. In the summer of 1915 

 a small United States Geological Survey party 

 in charge of H. M. Eakin made a rapid explora- 

 tion from Tanana River at Cosna to the head- 

 waters of Nowitna River and thence down the 

 Nowitna to the Yukon. A preliminary state- 

 ment of the important geologic and topo- 

 graphic observations made on that expedition 

 has recently been published by the United 

 States Geological Survey, Department of the 

 Interior, as part of Bulletin 642, entitled " Ex- 

 ploration in the Cosna-Nowitna Region." 

 Much time has been spent by a few prospectors 

 in a search for placer gold on Nowitna River, 

 but so far as is known the occurrence of com- 

 mercial placers in that region has not been 

 demonstrated. In much of the region pros- 

 pecting is beset with considerable difficulty, 

 owing to the great depth and breadth of the 

 alluvial filling in the larger valleys. Although 

 no lodes have yet been discovered the evidence 

 available seems to suggest that the gold in the 

 bedrock was probably introduced as a result of 

 the igneous activities that produced the mon- 

 zonites and granites, so that gold is most 

 likely to be found near these intrusive masses. 

 The map accompanying this report indicates 

 the distribution of these intrusive rocks as 

 well as of the other geologic formations. 



Dr. Lucy L. W. Wilson, excavating for the 

 Philadelphia Commercial Museum, has closed 

 her camp at Otowi, New Mexico. In this, her 

 second season, she has (a) excavated 165 rooms 

 and a kiva in the large pueblo ; (b) located 

 fourteen pueblos (two of them hundred room 

 houses) on low ridges south of the large 

 pueblo; (c) excavated fourteen rooms and a 

 kiva in these smaller pueblos; (d) excavated 

 and cleaned out the rooms in two three-story 

 cliff dwellings in the mesa north and west of 



