366 
tober 19, at 8:80 p.m., by Dr. E. K. Dunham, 
on “Certain aspects of the application of anti- 
septics in military practise.” 
Proressor Epwarp EF. NortHrup, of Prince- 
ton University, addressed the meeting of the 
Institute of Radio Engineers on October 9, on 
the subject “ Special heating effects of radio 
frequeney currents.” 
Dr. CHartEes R. KastMan, of the American 
Museum of Natural History, the author of 
important contributions to paleichthyology, 
-was drowned at Long Beach on September 27. 
By the will of Alfred Louis Moreau Gott- 
schalk, American Consul General at Rio de 
Janeiro, Brazil, who was one of the passengers 
on the United States collier Cyclops, which 
mysteriously disappeared from the seas last 
March, the U. S. National Museum receives a 
valuable collection of Inca pottery, Aztec idols, 
Trojan lamps, eastern brasses and arms, pot- 
tery and porcelains from Spanish America. 
Brazit is sending a medical mission to 
France. The party is to consist of fifty doc- 
tors besides a number of students. They are 
to be attached to the Brazilian Hospital al- 
ready installed near the front. 
TWELVE professors chosen from the faculties 
of various Spanish universities spent August 
in Paris, visiting the principal medical and 
surgical centers. The mission was charged to 
prepare a report on the progress made by 
. French war surgery. 
Tue much-dreaded European potato wart 
disease for which the Federal Horticultural 
Board quarantined against further importa- 
tion of potatoes in September, 1912, has been 
discovered. in ten mining villages near Hazle- 
ton, Pa., by Professor J. G. Sanders, economic 
zoologist of that state. Every effort of the 
state authorities, with the federal department 
assisting, is being directed to prevent the 
further spread of this insidious and most dan- 
gerous disease known to affect the potato. It 
appears that the disease has been established 
in some of these villages for at least seven or 
eight years, where it has been impossible to 
secure even the amount of seed planted in 
some gardens for the past few years. Only 
SCIENCE 
by accident was this disease discovered in 
these villages, which are largely made up of 
foreigners, who supposed that there was some- 
thing affecting the soil and ruining the crop. 
It seems advisable that all state authorities 
should inspect large centers of consumption 
where imported potatoes may have been pur- 
chased during the past eight or ten years. 
Tue British Ministry of Munitions has 
made an order prohibiting the sale, except 
under licence, of radio-active substances; lu- 
minous bodies and ores. The order applies to 
all radio-active substances (including actin- 
ium, radium, uranium, thorium and their dis- 
integration products and compounds), lumin- 
ous bodies in the preparation of which any 
radio-active substance is used, and ores from 
which any radio-active substance is obtainable, 
except uranium nitrate and except radio-active 
substances at the date of the order forming an 
integral part of an instrument, including in- 
struments of precision or for timekeeping. 
Mr. J. E. Barnarp, speaking at the British 
Scientific Products Exhibition at King’s Col- 
lege on August 20, said that the microscope 
was the almost universal tool of scientists, 
and was used in every industry which had a 
technical side. There was little doubt that 
after the war the microscope industry would 
undergo a transformation that would lead to 
a state of affairs in which the British micro- 
scope would be preeminent, as indeed, it was 
somewhere about 1880 to 1890. 
Some of the results of research on the nitro- 
gen problem were shown at the British Sci- 
entific Products Exhibition at King’s College, 
London. The Munitions Inventions Depart- 
ment of the Ministry of Munitions exhibited 
a unit plant for the oxidation of ammonia to 
oxides of nitrogen. The process (which was 
not extensively used outside Germany before 
the war) has been largely used by the enemy 
to obtain nitric acid for explosives, and also 
in the manufacture of sulphuric acid by the 
chamber process as a substitute for Chile ni- 
trate, which he has been unable to obtain 
owing to the blockade. The method is now 
widely used in England, and large firms, 
[N. S. Vou. XLVIII. No. 1241 
