302 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1396 



moot point, cf. the remarks at the close of the 

 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica. 



Several observers have reported hearing 

 such sounds during the very brilliant auroral 

 display of May 14. I could not detect any 

 such sounds on this occasion, doubtless owing 

 to the proximity of a large city from which 

 the volume of sound, even at 3 a.m., is quite 

 noticeable. 



I desire to place on record, however, certain 

 earlier esperiences under almost perfect con- 

 ditions of isolation and quiet. While in 

 charge of the Labrador station of the Lick 

 Observatory-Crocker Eclipse Expeditions of 

 1905, much of the work of adjusting the 

 instruments was necessarily done at night. 

 The station was located at Cartwright (lati- 

 tude -(-53° 42'), and auroral displays were 

 frequent and bright during July and August. 

 On several nights I heard faint swishing, 

 crackling sounds which I could attribute only 

 to the aurora. There were times when large 

 faintly luminous patches or " curtains " 

 passed rapidly over our camp; these seemed 

 to be close and not more than a few hundred 

 feet above the ground, though doubtless much 

 higher. The faint hissing and crackling 

 sounds were more in evidence as such lumi- 

 nous patches swept over us. 



Heber D. Curtis 

 Allegheny Observatort, 

 August 10, 1921 



LAWRENCE'S WARBLER 



To THE Editor op Science: It may be 

 worth while to record the presence of the 

 rare Vermivora (Helminthophila) lawrencei 

 (Herrick) in Lexington, Virginia, on May 

 14. The warbler was observed sitting on a 

 telephone wire less than ten yards from the 

 porch of a house just on the outskirts of 

 tovm, and its conspicuous black throat patch 

 and white wing bars served to fully identify 

 it, and differentiate it from V. pinus and V. 

 chrysoptera, of which it is supposed to be a 

 hybrid. Chapman speaks of it as much rarer 

 than Brewster's warbler, V. leucohronchialis, 

 the other supposed hybrid of these species, and 



says that less than a dozen specimens have 

 been recorded. 



Jas. Lewis Howe 

 Washington and Lee University, 

 Lexington, Virginia 



QUOTATIONS 



CHEMISTRY IN WAR 



Two distinguished chemists have recently 

 made pronouncements, identical on the 

 material side, divergent on the moral side, 

 on the use of posion gas in war. It is a 

 question on which civilization will have to 

 come to a decision or to live under lasting 

 and increasing menace. Sir T. Edward 

 Thorpe, in his presidential address to the 

 British Association, at Edinburgh, told his 

 audience that the Germans, between April, 

 1915, and September, 1918, had used no fewer 

 than eighteen different forms of poison — 

 gases, liquids, and solids — in their military 

 operations. Reprisals became inevitable, and 

 for the greater part of three years the leading 

 nations of the world were flinging the most 

 deadly products at one another that chemical 

 knowledge could suggest and technical skill 

 contrive. Sir William Pope, an equally 

 eminent English chemist, speaking at Mon- 

 treal a few days before, said that by the 

 Armistice the Allies had sufficient supplies 

 of mustard gas to "have enveloped the Ger- 

 mans knee deep, and had discovered a new 

 vapor against which respirators would be of 

 no avail, so strong that it would stop a man 

 if it were present in the atmosphere in the 

 proportion of one part in five millions." The 

 President of the British Association admitted 

 that warfare had now definitely entered on 

 a new phase. But in passionate words he 

 deplored the prospect on the part of science 

 and of humanity, and hoped that, through 

 the League of ISTations or by some other 

 form of international agreement, it might be 

 averted. Sir William Pope, on the other 

 hand, claimed that from the humanitarian 

 I)oint of view gas was more merciful than, 

 high explosives, and stated his belief that 

 chemical agencies would be the sole deciding 

 factor in future wars. 



