OcToBER 25, 1918] 
him by his friends in France; but he has been 
occupied in lecturing at the university to some 
young Frenchmen who were wounded at the 
time of the evacuation of the city four years 
ago and to others who have recovered from 
typhoid fever. As he could not undertake 
out-of-door studies, his attention has been 
turned to the paleontological material on 
hand in the museum collections. Professor 
Barrois now has the satisfaction of weleoming 
his compatriots after their recovery of Lille. 
Proressor L. R. Cary and Dr. Alfred C. 
Mayor have returned from an expedition of 
the department of marine biology of the Car- 
negie Institution of Washington to Samoa and 
Fiji. The expedition discovered that the 
growth-rate of Pacific corals is fully twice as 
fast as that of corresponding genera in the 
Atlantic. Also the occasional currents set 
toward the coast against the prevailing west- 
erly drift of the surface waters of the Pacific 
are relatively acid in comparison with the 
water of the westerly drift. 
Proressor F. S. Earnie has gone to Porto 
Rico, where he is to investigate for the United 
States government a serious and rather ob- 
scure disease of sugarcane. 
In giving the teaching staff of the depart- 
ment of chemistry of the College of the City 
of New York in the issue of Science for Oc- 
tober 4 the word “ emeritus” was misplaced 
by a printer’s error so that it occurred after 
the name of Professor Charles Baskerville, 
head of the department, instead of after the 
name of Professor L. H. Friedburg, who has 
retired after teaching in the college for some 
thirty years. 
Proressor Exttwoop B. Spear, of the depart- 
ment of chemistry of the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, gave an illustrated lec- 
ture on “Some of the Problems of Gas War- 
fare” at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and 
Sciences on October 19. Much of the mate- 
rial presented was first-hand experience since, 
as consulting expert to the Bureau of Mines, 
Professor Spear has dealt with problems of de- 
fense and offense, including gas masks and 
mustard gas. 
SCIENCE 
®415 
Dr. Hersert G. Kepret, head of the depart- 
ment of mathematics at the University of 
Florida, died on October 5 at the age of fifty- 
two years. Dr. Keppel had been serving as a 
member of a National Commission to super- 
vise the mathematics instruction given by the 
Y. M. C. A. at military camps, and while 
away from home on this duty contracted Span- 
ish influenza, which resulted in his death. 
Livic More.ut, professor of medicine at the 
Pisa University, died on October 16, as the re- 
sult of an infection contracted during a bac- 
teriological research he recently conducted for 
the purpose of isolating the germ causing 
Spanish influenza. 
The Journal of the American Medical Asso- 
ciation states that at the request of the Sur- 
geon-General of the U. S. Public Health Serv- 
ice, the officers of the American Public Health 
Association announce the postponement of 
their annual meeting, which was to have been 
held in Chicago October 14-17, to December 
9-12, at the same place. This action was 
deemed advisable especially because it was 
considered unwise to ask sanitarians to leave 
their posts under present health conditions. 
Owing to the influenza epidemic prevalent 
throughout the country and the resultant in- 
creased demand for the services of doctors in 
their home communities, it has been considered 
advisable by the executive committee of the 
General Medical Board to cancel the meeting 
scheduled to be held in New York City at the 
Waldorf Astoria, on October 20. The regular 
annual session of the Clinical Congress of the * 
American College of Surgeons, arranged for 
the week beginning October 21, has been can- 
celled for the same reason. 
WE learn from the London Times that a 
royal commission has been appointed “ to con- 
sider and report whether it is advisable to make 
any changes in the denominations of the cur- 
rency and money account of the United King- 
dom with a view to placing them on a decimal 
basis, and whether, if an alteration of the pres- 
ent system is recommended, it is desirable to 
adopt with or without modification the pro- 
posals embodied in the Bill recently introduced 
into the House of Lords by Lord Southwark or 
