546 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIT. No. 1405. 



Dr. L. I. Shaw, assistant chief chemist of 

 the Bureau of Mines, has been transferred 

 to the Columbus, Ohio, ceramic experiment 

 station of the bureau, where he will have 

 charge of some newly organized research on 

 refractory products. 



Wilson Popenoe, agricultural explorer for 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, has re- 

 turned to Washington after a two years' ab- 

 sence in Guatemala, Costa Eica, Colombia, 

 Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Mr. Popenoe has 

 sent to Washington from these countries 

 living material of numerous food-plants, in- 

 cluding new varieties of the avocado for trial 

 in California and Florida, several promising 

 species of Eubus, the pejibaye palm (Gui- 

 lielma utilis) of Costa Eica, a collection of 

 potatoes from Ecuador and Colombia, and a 

 superior variety of the Andean cherry {Pru- 

 nus sdlificolia). 



Professor Franz Doflein, now at the Zoo- 

 logical Institute at Breslau, Germany, is com- 

 pleting a revision of his " Lehrbuch der Proto- 

 zoenkunde." He finds it difficult to secure in 

 Germany access to American papers in the 

 field of protozoology published since 1916 and 

 will welcome the sending, from investigators 

 in this field, of reprints of their papers. 



Professor Henry ISTorris Eussell, of 

 Princeton University, spoke before the Phys- 

 ical Colloquium of the Western Electric Com- 

 • pany in New York, recently, on the subject 

 " Ionization in the Stars." 



Professor J. H. Walton, of the department 

 of chemistry of the University of Wisconsin, 

 lectured before the Milwaukee Section of the 

 American Chemical Society on K"ovember 18 

 on " The influence of impurities on the rate 

 of growth of certain crystals." 



At a joint meeting of the Washington Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, the Biological Society of 

 Washington and the Botanical Society of 

 Washington on November 12, Professor Arthur 

 de Jaczewski, director of Institute of Mycology 

 and Pathology at Petrograd, delivered an ad- 

 dress on " The development of mycology and 

 pathology in Eussia"; Professor Nicholas I. 

 Vavilov, director of the Bureau of Applied 



Botany and Plant Breeding at Petrograd, de- 

 livered an address on " Eussian work in gene- 

 tics and plant breeding," and Dr. Vernon L. 

 Kellogg, permanent secretary of the National 

 Eesearch Council, led a discussion on " The 

 interrelations of Eussian and American scien- 

 tists." 



Dr. Heber D. Curtis, director of the Alle- 

 gheny Observatory, lectured before the Frank- 

 lin Institute at Philadelphia on November 16 

 on " The spiral nebulas and their interpreta- 

 tion." On the following day he lectured before 

 the Washington Academy of Sciences on " The 

 sun, our nearest star." 



The series of lectures on " The evolution of 

 man " under the auspices of the Yale chapter 

 of the Society of the Sigma Xi will include a 

 lecture on " The evolution of intelligence " by 

 the president of the university. Dr. James E. 

 Angell. 



The winter course of popular scientific lec- 

 tures before the Eoyal Canadian Institute at 

 Toronto was inaugurated on October 29 by a 

 lecture entitled " Some aspects of economic 

 entomology," by Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of 

 the Bureau of Entomology of the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture. It is the purpose of 

 the institute to have scientific men from the 

 United States deliver lectures in this course 

 duriiig the coming season. 



Professor Douglas W. Johnson, of Co- 

 lumbia University, delivered a lecture on the 

 " Topography and strategy of the Western 

 Front " before the officers of the Naval War 

 College at Newport, on October 28. On No- 

 vember 1 he addressed the New York Post of 

 the Society of American Military Engineers 

 on " Geology and topography in relation to 

 the strategy and tactics of the Great War." 



We learn from Nature that the 16Sth ses- 

 sion of the Eoyal Society of Arts will be 

 opened on Wednesday, November 2, at 8 p.m., 

 when Mr. Alan A. Campbell Swinton, chair- 

 man of the council, will deliver an experi- 

 mental address on " Wireless telegraphy." 

 Among the papers fixed for the meetings up to 

 Christmas are the following: The work of the 

 industrial fatigue research board, by D. E. 



