Decembeb 7, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



563 



address before the California State Horticul- 

 tural Commission on November 19, on the bac- 

 terial gummosis of stone fruits with special 

 reference to the serious outbreak along the 

 Pacific coast this year. 



We learn from Nature that at the annual 

 general meeting of the London Mathematical 

 Society, held on November 1, the following 

 were elected as officers for 1917—18 : President, 

 Professor H. M. Macdonald; Vice-Presidents, 

 Professor H. Hilton, Professor E. "W. Hobson, 

 and Sir J. Larmor; Treasurer, Dr. A. E. 

 Western; Secretaries, Dr. T. J. I'A. Bromwich 

 and Mr. G. H. Hardy; Other Memlers of the 

 Council, Professor W. Burnside, Dr. S. Chap- 

 man, Mr. A. L. Dixon, Miss H. P. Hudson, 

 Mr. A. E. JollifFe, Mr. J. E. Littlewood, Pro- 

 fessor A. E. H. Love, Major P. A. MacMahon, 

 and Professor J. W. Nicholson. 



Mr. W. Duddell, F.E.S., past-president of 

 the Eontgen Society and of the Institution of 

 Electrical Engineers, died on November 4, 

 aged forty-five years. 



Sm David C. McVail, professor of clinical 

 medicine in St. Mungo's College, Glasgow, 

 from 1889 to 1906, and author of contributions 

 to physiology, died on November 4 at the age 

 of seventy-two years. 



The deaths are also announced of Dr. J. 

 Eambousek, professor of factory hygiene at 

 the University of Prague, and an authoritative 

 writer on industrial poisonings; of P. Ma- 

 lerba, professor of physiological chemistry at 

 the University of Naples, and of M. E. Huet, 

 one of the pioneers in electrology in France. 



In connection with or in response to the call 

 of the President for volunteers, the attention 

 of all technical men, i. e., men skilled in any 

 line of science or mechanical or electrical or 

 chemical or ordnance or explosives or mining 

 or ship-building or railroad or motors or metal- 

 lurgy or building of aeroplanes or water sup- 

 ply or sanitation, etc., is especially invited to 

 the need of the Army for such men — aged 

 eighteen to forty — in sundry branches of the 

 technical troops. Information may be ob- 

 tained from Major J. E. Bloom, U. S. A., 266 

 Market Street, Newark, N. J. 



A NUMBER of American military surgeons 

 arrived in England during the fortnight prior 

 to September 22, and took up duty in a num- 

 ber of hospitals in London and the provinces, 

 and also in France, to which country about 

 fifty of the seventy-five had been sent. These 

 will only attend the military patients in the 

 institutions to which they have been assigned, 

 and have been so allotted that a number of doc- 

 tors may be released for work among the civil 

 population. There are now over 900 Ameri- 

 can medical men serving with the British 

 forces in Great Britain and France. 



A JAPANESE medical corps of one hundred 

 men has gone to Eumania to help in the effort 

 to control the epidemic of typhus fever in that 

 country. The corps is divided into three sec- 

 tions — internal diseases, surgery and epidem- 

 ics — each with its own chief. The headquar- 

 ters of the corps will be at Jassy. 



WiLLAED E. Case, of Auburn, N. Y., has 

 made a gift to the New York Electrical Society 

 the amount of which has not yet been made 

 public, but which is sufficient to defray all the 

 liabilities of the society and leave a substantial 

 sum for the carrying on of its special work. 



The fifth annual Pennsylvania Welfare and 

 Efficiency Conference was held in the House 

 of Eepresentatives, Harrisburg, on November 

 21 and 22. These conferences are held an- 

 nually for the pui-pose of stimulating discus- 

 sions on the problems of industries and labor, 

 with special reference to the reduction of the 

 enormous number of diseases and deaths, and 

 the numerous industrial accidents. The fifth 

 conference of industrial physicians and sur- 

 geons was held at Harrisburg, on November 

 20. At the morning session the medical and 

 surgical problems of the staff of the largest in- 

 dustries representative of Pennsylvania were 

 considered, and in the afternoon the question 

 of industrial diseases was taken up. 



Children in various parts of Great Britain 

 are now busy collecting the horse chestnuts re- 

 quired for the manufacture of war munitions. 

 The nuts have ripened more quickly in some 

 districts than in others, and in some parts of 



