632 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 932 



once without waiting for the fu]l plan to go 

 into effect in 1914. 



Dr. F. p. Chillengwoeth, Hadam, Conn., 

 has been appointed assistant professor of 

 physiology in the University of Kansas. 



At Princeton University the following 

 new instructors and assistants have been ap- 

 pointed: James Waddell Alexander, Eay 

 Edwin Gilman and Edward Staples Smith, 

 instructors in mathematics; John Eenshaw 

 Carson, instructor in electrical engineering 

 and physics; Keith Kuenzi Smith, instructor 

 in physics; Percy Noyes Edwards, Charles 

 Irving Place and Charles Hurlbut Sterrett, 

 instructors in geodesy. 



Dr. Hans Stille, professor of mineralogy 

 and geology at Hamburg Technological 

 School, has accepted a call to Leipzig, as the 

 successor of Professor H. Credner, who has 

 retired. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



THE FIRST USE OF TRINIDAD PITCH FOR 

 ROAD MAKING 



The appearance in The Popular Science 

 Monthly for July and August, 1912, of Dr. 

 Clifford Eichardson's very interesting and in- 

 forming article entitled " Trinidad and Ber- 

 mudez Asphalts and their Use in Highway 

 Construction," leads me to think that the 

 publication of the following account of what 

 is probably the earliest American use of pitch 

 for road making may from an historical stand- 

 point not be devoid of interest. It was found 

 in the course of some other research in Vol. 

 I. of R. Montgomery Martin's " History of 

 the West Indies, comprising Jamaica, Hon- 

 duras, Trinidad, etc.," which is Vol. IV. of 

 " The British Colonial Library " by the same 

 author. This book was published in 1836. 

 Eor its use I am indebted to the kindness of 

 Mr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress. 



On page 195, at the close of his description 

 of La Brea, the pitch lake, is found the fol- 

 lowing footnote : 



I am indebted to the personal courtesy of 

 Major General Sir Lewis Grant, late Governor of 



Trinidad, for the following facts: "The pitch of 

 the lake has been adopted for the improvement of 

 the roads, particularly in the fertile district of 

 Naparima, where it was brought for the purpose 

 from La, Brea. In the wet season the roads at 

 Naparima are almost impassable in those parts 

 where there has been no application of the pitch; 

 but where the pitch has been applied, which is the 

 ease for several miles in North Naparima, there is 

 a hard surface formed, which makes transport 

 comparatively easy, both from the support af- 

 forded and from the little friction of the hard- 

 ened pitch. ' ' 



From the above it may be seen that pitch 

 was used locally for road making in Trinidad 

 some time, possibly several years, prior to 

 1836, the date of Martin's book. The use of 

 pitch in Europe, so far as the present writer 

 has been able to ascertain, but little antedates 

 the above. Eirinus, a Greek physician, made 

 use in 1712 of asphalt from the Val de 

 Travers, Neuchatel, Switzerland, as a coating 

 for both stone and wooden walls to protect 

 them from decay caused by insects, changes 

 of temperature and weather. He knew of its 

 use in Babylon as an ingredient of mortar, 

 and seems to have used it in the same way as 

 a lining for cisterns and as a coating for walls 

 and floors of warehouses. However, it seems 

 to have been iirst used as a road material by 

 Count de Sassenay, who obtained his material 

 from the same source as Eirinus and made 

 use of it on the roads of France as early as 

 1832. Tliis seems to have been rock or block 

 asphalt. Rock asphalt was used in paving 

 the streets of Paris in 1838, but not on a large 

 scale until 1854. The same material was first 

 used on the streets of London in 1869. The 

 first pavements of this material in the United 

 States were laid in Newark, New Jersey, in 

 1870. The following year saw streets in New 

 York paved with asphalt and shortly there- 

 after Philadelphia followed suit. These three 

 cities all made use of Trinidad asphalt in the 

 rock (i. e., presumably block) form. How- 

 ever, its use as a paving material on a large 

 scale in the United States began with the 

 rehabilitation of the streets of our national 

 capitol, Washington, in 1876-77. Here both 



