Mat 5, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



487 



building will serve as a center for American sci- 

 ence in its various fields. Here investigators from 

 all parts of the country and from abroad may be 

 brought togther for counsel and cooperation. 

 Facing the Lincoln Memorial, the marble building 

 in simple classical style will rise three stories 

 from a broad terrace. It has a frontage of 260 

 feet. On the first floor there will be an audito- 

 rium seating some 600 people, a lecture hall hold- 

 ing 250, a reading room, library, conference 

 rooms and exhibition halls. The basement con- 

 contains a cafeteria and kitchen. The two upper 

 floors will be devoted to ofliees. The building is 

 the gift of the Carnegie Corporation of New 

 York, while the ground was bought at a cost of 

 about $200,000 through the donations of about a 

 score of benefactors. Bertram Grosvenor Good- 

 hue of New York is the architect. He is one of 

 the best known architects in the country and de- 

 signed the St. Thomas Church, the West Point 

 buildings, the Nebraska State Capitol and many 

 other buUdings. The contract for the construc- 

 tion of the building has been let to Charles T. 

 Wills, Inc., of New York, and it is expected that 

 the building vrill be ready for occupancy in the 

 autumn of 1923. Lee Laurie, the sculptor, has 

 been selected to do the decorations, which will 

 symbolize and depict the progress of science and 

 its benefits to humanity. A series of bronze bas- 

 reliefs will show a procession of the leaders of 

 scientific thought from the earliest Greek philoso- 

 phers to modern Americans. On passing through 

 the entrance hall the visitor will find himself in a 

 lofty rotunda. Here he will see in actual opera- 

 tion apparatus demonstrating certain fundamental 

 scientific facts that hitherto he has had to take on 

 hearsay. A coelostat telescope, mounted on the 

 dome of the central rotunda, will form a large 

 image of the sun on the white surface of a cir- 

 cular table in the middle of the room. Here 

 visitors will be able to see the sun-spots, changing 

 in number and form from day to day, and moving 

 across the disk as the sun turns on its axis. A 

 60 foot pendulum, suspended from tlie center of 

 the dome, will be set swinging through a long arc, 

 repeating the celebrated experiment of Foueault. 

 The swinging pendulum will mark an invariable 

 direction in space, and as the earth and the build- 

 ing rotate beneath it, their rotation will be plainly 

 shown by the steady change in direction of the 

 pendulum's swing over a divided arc. Two great 

 phenomena of nature, the sun and the rotation 

 of the earth, are thus to be exhibited. Other 

 phenomena to be demonstrated in striking form in 

 the central rotunda are magnetic storms, earth- 



quakes', gravitational pull of small masses, the 

 pressure of light, the visible growth of plants, 

 swimming infusoria in a drop of ditch water, 

 living bacteria and other interesting phenomena. 

 In the seven exhibition rooms surrounding the 

 central rotunda the latest results of scientific and 

 industrial research will be illustrated. One room 

 will be set aside for the use of government 

 bureaus, another for industrial research labora- 

 tories, others for tJie laboratories, observatories 

 and research institutes of universities and othel 

 institutions. The newest discoveries and advances 

 in the mathematical, physical and biological sci- 

 ences and their applications will be shown in this 

 living museum, whose exhibits will be constantly 

 changing with the progress of science. One week 

 there may be displayed the latest forms of radio 

 telephony ; the next perhaps a set of psychological 

 tests or a new find of fossils or a series of syn- 

 thetic chemical compounds. Such a mutating 

 museum will continue to attract and instruct large 

 numbers of tourists and residents. 



Queries concerning the origin of the Australian 

 floras: Pkofessor D. H. Campbell, Leland Stan- 

 ford, Jr., University, California. (1) The con- 

 ditions in the north and south temperate zones 

 are very different. The boreal floras are rela- 

 tively uniform, owing to the proximity of the 

 Eurasian and North American continents. The 

 south temperate floras are much less intimately 

 related on account of the extreme isolation of tlie 

 principal land masses, viz.. South America, 

 South Africa and Australia. (2) An early sep- 

 aration of the land masses of the northern and 

 southern hemispheres is indicated by the very 

 great differences between the vegetation of th<> 

 north and south temperate zones. The most prom- 

 inent types in each region are either completely 

 absent from the other, or very sparingly repre- 

 sented. The south temperate zone has no oaks, 

 chestnuts, walnuts, poplars, maples and many 

 other deciduous trees and shrubs of the north. On 

 the other hand, the Casuariuas and Proteaeeae 

 (Banksia, Grevillea, etc.), the Eucalypti and 

 other Myrtaceee, as well as many other evergreen 

 trees and shrubs, are unknown in the northern 

 regions. The same is true of the Conifers. The 

 true pines, firs and spruces of the north are re- 

 placed by the Araucarias, Agathis and Podo- 

 earpus of the south. (3) Australia presents an 

 extraordinary degree of endemism, especially in 

 western Australia, the headquarters of the autoch- 

 thonous flora. (4) Australia has three distinct 

 floras — a. The tropical rain-forest of the coastal 

 regions of Queensland and New South Wales. 



