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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 920 



voted an annual minimum endowment of 

 £13,500 towards the administration and needs 

 of the university, and the chair of agriculture 

 has been fully endowed by the newly ap- 

 pointed Chancellor, Sir W. Hackett. Mr. H. 

 Gunn, who carried out similar work in South 

 Africa with success, has been appointed or- 

 ganizer of the university, and is now actively 

 engaged in making preparations for the in- 

 auguration of the institution early next year. 



Dr. B. E. Eay, at present of the Experi- 

 ment Station and College of Agriculture, 

 North Carolina, has accepted a position as 

 professor of chemistry in the College of Agri- 

 culture and Mechanic Arts, Mayaguez, P. R. 

 Special attention will be given to the develop- 

 ment of courses in sugar chemistry. 



Professor I. F. Lewis, Ph.D. (Hopkins), of 

 Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Va., has 

 accepted a call to the assistant professorship 

 of botany at the University of Wisconsin. 



Mr. J. W. Merritt, assistant in mineralogy 

 at Northwestern University, has been ap- 

 pointed instructor in geology at Dartmouth 

 College. 



At University College, Reading, Dr. S. M. 

 T. Auld, lecturer in the chemical department 

 of the Southeastern Agricultural College at 

 Wye, has been appointed professor of agricul- 

 tural chemistry, and Mr. John Coding, of the 

 Midland Agricultural College, has been ap- 

 pointed research chemist in dairying. 



H. Maxwell Lefoy has been appointed pro- 

 fessor of entomology at the Imperial College 

 of Science and Technology, South Kensing- 

 ton, London. 



Professor Johannes Fitting, director of 

 the State Botanical Institute at Hamburg, 

 has been called to Bonn, as the successor of 

 Professor Strasburger. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



THE CORROSION OP IRON AND STEEL 



To THE Editor of Science: In the issue of 

 Science for April 26, 1912, appears a review of 

 a recent book, " The Corrosion of Iron and 

 Steel," by J. Newton Friend, Ph.D. The re- 

 view is signed " William H. Walker." The 



writer did not see this review at the time it 

 was issued in Science, but his attention has 

 just been called to it in a curious way. It 

 appears that the review has been reprinted in 

 pamphlet form for distribution as a commer- 

 cial argument. The commercial argument is 

 based upon the following paragraph from Pro- 

 fessor Walker's review : 



It is a matter of regret that the author has been 

 misled, as have also the reviewer and others, by 

 giving credence to statements and data supplied 

 by the American Rolling Mill Co., of Middletown, 

 Ohio, which he publishes on pages 114, 250, 276 

 and 351, regarding the purity of this firm's prod- 

 ucts. For example, the material said to have the 

 analysis published on page 114, as containing 

 99.954 per cent, iron, and which on page 276 is 

 proposed as a standard for pure iron on which to 

 base a corrosion factor, was later found by the 

 author himself, Trmch to his surprise, to contain 

 .172 per cent, copper. 



In the commercial reprint referred to, the 

 portion of the quotation from Professor Walk- 

 er's review which the writer has italicized, ap- 

 peared in large block letters. There is only 

 one inference that the reader of this pamphlet 

 could form, which is that The American Roll- 

 ing Mill Co., of Middletown, Ohio, is pur- 

 posely putting copper into their material for 

 some ulterior purpose. 



The writer must express himself as being 

 surprised, to say the least, that Professor 

 Walker should have included in a review of a 

 scientific book such a paragraph as this, based 

 upon an analysis of a single open market 

 sample which was manufactured in the early 

 days of a new industry. Professor Walker 

 must be well aware of the situation with re- 

 spect to the elimination of copper from iron 

 in the open hearth furnace, for under date of 

 March 16, 1911, the writer wrote to Professor 

 Walker as follows: 



In regard to the point you raise about copper in 

 ingot iron, I can only tell you that at the time 

 when the American Rolling Mill Co. first adopted 

 the slogan in a trade way, of ' ' 99.94 per cent, 

 pure," they had not established their chemical 

 research laboratory and had paid no attention to 

 the possible appearance of small amounts of copper 

 in the iron, which came from the ore and selected 



