144 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1258 



greater progress in American mining at the 

 one hundred and nineteenth meeting of the 

 American Institute of Mining Engineers, 

 which will he held here during the week of 

 February 17. Prominent members of the Ca- 

 nadian Mining- Institute, National Research 

 Council, the American Institute of Electrical 

 Engineers will join the Amierican mining ex- 

 perts in their discussions. 



At no period in the history of American 

 mining have the problems of production, espe- 

 cially as to labor and scientific processes, been 

 so momentous as to-day and at this meeting 

 important readjustment plans will be pre- 

 sented. The program calls for ten business 

 sessions, at which some forty subjects will be 

 presented; a number of social features of a 

 metropolitan kind, and an all-day excursion to 

 the federal shipyard in Newark Bay where the 

 first electric-welded ship is being built. 



It is expected that this meeting of the insti- 

 tute will be attended by mining experts from 

 every state in the union and from a number of 

 foreign countries, who are identified with the 

 most important mining operations now going 

 on. Many of these men have in the past two 

 years been serving the government in their re- 

 spective fields. 



At the joint session with the electrical engi- 

 neers there will be six important papers on the 

 sulbject of electric-welding. Some of these by 

 officials of the National Research Council and 

 Emergency Fleet Corporation, who have par- 

 ticipated in the- development of electric-weld- 

 ing which has made great strides forward in 

 the war work of the last two years. 



The institute meeting will open on Monday 

 morning, February 17, Tuesday wiill be Ca- 

 nadian Mining Institute day and Wednesday 

 will be featured by the session with the elec- 

 trical engineers and the National Research 

 Council session, followed by the annual ban- 

 quent in the evening. 



The officers of the American Institute of 

 Mining Engineers are: Sidney J. Jennings, 

 president; L. D. Ricketts, Philip N. Moore, 

 past presidents ; C. W. Goodale, first vice-presi- 

 dents; George D. Barron, treasurer; Bradley 

 Stoughton, secretary. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

 Edward Charles Pickering, professor of 

 astronomy in Harvard University and director 

 of the Harvard College Observatory, died on 

 February 3 at the age of seventy-two years. 

 To oversee the opening of the i>ort of Dant- 

 zig and to supervise relief work there Pro- 

 fessors Alonzo Taylor, of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, and Vernon L. Kellogg, of Stan- 

 ford University, started on January 29 on a 

 railroad journey across Germany. Drs. Taylor 

 and Kellogg will, on their return, make a re- 

 port on food conditions in Germany. 



Major C. E. Mendenhall, professor of phys- 

 ics on leave of absence from the University of 

 Wisconsin, has been appointed scientific at- 

 tache to the United States legation at London 

 and will sail for England immediately. 



Dr. Alexis Carrel, who had been in charge 

 of a field hospital in the Montdidier section, 

 has returned to take up his work at the Rocke- 

 feU-er Institute for Medical Research. 



Brigadier-General John M. T. Finney, of 

 Baltimore, chief consulting surgeon of the 

 American Expeditionary Forces, who sailed 

 nineteen months ago for France as head of .the 

 Johns Hopkins Base Hospital Unit, returned 

 to the United States on January 22. 



Lieutenant Colonel Allerton S. Cushman, 

 having received his honorable discharge from 

 the Ordnance Department, U. S. A., where he 

 has served for the past eighteen months, has 

 returned to his former professional activities 

 as head of the Institute of Industrial Research, 

 Waishington, D. C. 



Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Hildebrand has 

 returned after an absence of a year in France 

 to his position of professor of chemistry in 

 the University of California. He has been re- 

 cently Commandant of Hanlon Field, near 

 Chaumont, which included the Experimental 

 Field and the A. E. F. Gas Defense School of 

 the Chemical Warfare Service. 



Major J. H. Mathews, Ordnance Depart- 

 ment, U. S. A., has been released from military 

 service and has returned to the LTniversity of 

 Wisconsin. Professor Mathews has been pro- 



