56 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVT. No. 1177 



Major Gold, one of the superintendents of 

 division in the office, and that with the force 

 in the Eastern Mediterranean under Captain 

 E. M. Wedderburn, honorable secretary of the 

 Scottish Meteorological Society. "With him is 

 Lieutenant E. Kidson, a graduate of Canter- 

 bury College, New Zealand, who has distin- 

 guished himself as magnetician in the service 

 of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 

 and came to this country to offer his services. 

 In the organization of these meteorological 

 services, the committee has received great 

 assistance from one of its members, Major 

 H. G. Lyons, E.E., formerly director-general 

 of the Egyptian Survey Department, whose 

 services were lent by the War Office in view of 

 the importance of an adequate knowledge of 

 the weather to the proper conduct of naval and 

 military operations in the Mediterranean, to 

 which attention was called by the Admiralty. 

 Major Lyons has taken charge of that de- 

 partment of the work of the Office from May 

 17, 1915, and more recently he has been ap- 

 pointed to represent the War Office on the 

 committee. The special thanks of the Ad- 

 miralty for the services of the meteorological 

 officer in the Mediterranean have been received 

 through the War Office. In view of the im- 

 portance of coordinating the experience of 

 flying officers with the work of the office and 

 observatories in order to obtain more effective 

 knowledge of the structure of the atmosphere 

 for the use of the air services, the committee 

 represented to the director of military aero- 

 nautics the desirability of appointing a pro- 

 fessor of meteorology to the Royal Flying Corps 

 (with the rank of major during the war). The 

 director of military aeronautics concurred, and 

 the Army Council approved the appointment 

 of Lieutenant G. I. Taylor, E.F.C., to that 

 office. Major Taylor was Schuster reader in 

 meteorology from February 20, 1912. His 

 services were lent to the Board of Trade for 

 meteorological work on the steamship Scotia, 

 chartered for the investigation of ice in 1913. 



THE WISCONSIN PHARMACEUTICAL EXPERI- 

 MENT STATION 



At the request of the State Pharmaceutical 

 Association, the Wisconsin Pharmaceutical 



Experiment Station was established by special 

 legislative enactment four years ago. Its 

 meager budget of $2,500 nevertheless yielded 

 modest results since practically the entire sum 

 was expended in productive work. This was 

 made possible because of the close cooperation 

 of the station with the department of phar- 

 macy of the university. 



As a war measure, the present legislature 

 has doubled the income of the station. The 

 pharmaceutical garden has been increased 

 from three to ten acres, with ground that ad- 

 mits of an increase to thirty acres as soon as 

 the means of the station permit. This increase 

 in garden area was made largely at the request 

 of the Office of Drug-Plant and Poisonous- 

 Plant Investigations, which keeps an expert on 

 the grounds, in order that acre experiments of 

 greater economic significance might be car- 

 ried out. 



The station also enjoys a research fellow- 

 ship of $500 for the investigation of thymol 

 and related problems, established for the aca- 

 demic year 1917-18 by Fritzsche Bros., of New 

 York. Another $500 previously offered as fel- 

 lowship by the Kremers-Urban Co., pharma- 

 ceutical manufacturers of Milwaukee, was 

 utilized toward an endowment fund for phar- 

 maceutical research, a movement, which, like 

 the station movement five years ago, was 

 started by the pharmaceutical alumni of the 

 university. 



In addition, the income from $10,328, be- 

 queathed by the wills of the late Mr. and Mrs. 

 Albert Hollister, is available for graduate 

 study and research in the form of the Hol- 

 lister fellowship in pharmacy. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



President R. A. Pearson, of the Iowa State 

 College, is acting as assistant to the secretary 

 of agriculture to cooperate with the state 

 boards for food production aiid conservation. 



Dr. Frank M. Chapman, curator of orni- 

 thology in the American Museum of Natural 

 History, is now in Washington, where he is 

 director of the Red Cross Bureau of Publica- 

 tions. He is the editor of the newly estab- 

 lished Bed Cross Bulletin, which is designed 



