604 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1407. 



negatives were loaned the writer by Profes- 

 sor T. Wingate Todd, director of the an- 

 atomical laboratory of Western Reserve Uni- 

 versity, where Professor Van der Stricht was 

 a guest for some time during the war. 



It was understood that profits from the 

 sale of the slides should go for the benefit of 

 the Archives de Biologie. of which Professors 

 Van der Stricht and Brachet are editors. 

 Concerning the Archives Professor Van der 

 Stricht had written in July, 1919 : 



... we need your valuable support, for we will 

 lose half of our subscribers, the Germans and Aus- 

 trians. . . . The Belgian government has not yet a 

 penny available for laboratory work. In spite of 

 all, we are very confident . . . and Belgium, with 

 the support of the States, will live again. 



The use of the cytological preparations for 

 purposes of securing funds was, of course, not 

 thought of by their maker, but seemed quite 

 legitimate to us. This communication in 

 Science is thus intended as an informal re- 

 port to the considerable number of institu- 

 tions who cooperated by their orders as to 

 the outcome of the scheme. 



Up to the present time two remittances 

 have been sent, totalling $350. At the pre- 

 vailing rate of exchange this allowed a real- 

 ization of 4703 francs. 



In the letters accompanying the remit- 

 tances the liberty was taken of using the fol- 

 lowing wording, in part: 



You must accept this small sum as being the re- 

 sult of your own labor. Incidentally you may well 

 feel that you have assisted instruction as given in 

 numerous American institutions; for not only in 

 courses dealing with embryology and heredity, but 

 also in all introductory courses in general biology 

 the phenomena of maturation, fertilization and cell 

 division constitute fundamental information . . . 

 much credit is due the institutions which purchased 

 the lantern slides, for without their orders our little 

 enterprise would have been a failure. 



In acknowledgment Professor Van der 

 Stricht said, in part: 



In agreement with my colleague, Dr. Brachet, 

 we gratefully accept this amount which will be de- 

 voted to the publication of the Archives de Biologie. 

 The cost of issuing this journal is, indeed, very 



great just now. Subscriptions do not cover it, so 

 that we lose a great deal of money. Fortunately, 

 my appeal in 1919 to the United States colleagues 

 (for subscriptions) has been rather gratifyingly 

 answered; many orders for sets came in, so that we 

 were able to continue printing. Your . . . dona- 

 tions will help us very much for this purpose. Thus 

 we owe our " Zoological Friends in America " an 

 immeasurable debt of gratitude. 



1 would like to add that sets of these lan- 

 tern slides may still be obtained, though we 

 are not making them except on receipt of 

 orders. They clearly illustrate twelve im- 

 portant steps in maturation, fertilization, 

 and the first cleavage of the eggs of Nereis 

 limiata. The price is $15 for the twelve 

 slides, and the mutual agreement is that all 

 receipts above actual expenses shall go for 

 the assistance of Belgian science in the man- 

 ner above indicated. 



Robert A. Budington 

 Speak Laboeatobt, Oberlin College, 

 Oberlin, Ohio 



the vibrations of a tuning fork 

 To THE Editor of Science: In a number 

 of Science,^ which has just come to our at- 

 tention. Professor Charles K. Wead makes 

 the following statement: 



In a recent article in a psychological journal the 

 tmiing fork is considered as composed of two bars 

 each att-ached at one end to a solid block. 

 He then proceeds to describe Chladni's theory 

 of the tuning fork to correct this " surpris- 

 ing " disclosure. 



After reading Professor Wead's note we 

 referred to our original paper.- In compar- 

 ing vibrating bars and forks we write: 



The bar is, in fact, a fork straightened out; or, 

 which is the same thing, the fork is a bar bent into 

 the shape of a U. If we gradually bend a bar into 

 a U, the two nodes approach the base. When the 

 bending is complete we have a single node at the 

 base — i.e., a fork. 



Our point, of course, is that the tuning fork 

 is essentially a bar — a single vibrating system. 

 iNov. 11, 1921, 468-9. 



2 Psycliological Bulletin, September, 1918, 293 f. 



