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SCIENCE 



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



been eleated vice-president for 1919, auto- 

 matically becoming president in 1920. 



At tbe meeting of tbe Wasbington Academy 

 of Sciences on January 30, Major F. R. Moul- 

 ton gave an address on tbe " Deviation of tbe 

 stars." 



Dr. Gregory P. Baxter, professor of chem- 

 istry at Harvard tTniversity, is giving at tbe 

 Lowell Institute, Boston, a series of lectures on 

 " Chemistry in tbe war." 



AViLLL\M Erskine Kellicott, professor of 

 biology at tbe College of tbe City of IsTew 

 York, died on January 29, at tbe age of forty 

 years. 



Dr. Brown Ayres, since 1904 president of 

 tbe University of Tennessee and previously 

 professor of pbysics and dean of tbe School 

 of Technology of Tulane University, died on 

 January 28, aged sixty-two years. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 



NEWS 



A SCHOOL for social research in New Tork 

 City has been organized to meet tbe needs of 

 those interested in social, political, economic 

 and educational problems. The school will 

 open with a full program in October, 1919. 

 In tbe meantime, lectures will be given from 

 February 10 to May 3 by Professor Thorstein 

 Veblin, James Harvey Robinson, Charles A. 

 Beard and others. 



Dr. W. E. Bloor, formerly assistant pro- 

 fessor of biological chemistry at the Harvard 

 Medical School, Boston, Mass., has been ap- 

 pointed professor of biochemistry and head of 

 tbe division of biochemistry and pharmacology 

 at the University of California. 



Mr. C. S. McKellogg, corporal in tbe Chem- 

 ical Warfare Service, stationed at tbe Ameri- 

 can University, has been furloughed to tbe 

 University of Mississippi as assistant professor 

 of chemistry, where be is to have charge of 

 tbe work in organic and physiological chem- 

 istry. 



Dr. Leon Fredericq, who was professor of 

 physiology at Liege and later at Ghent, was 

 imprisoned by tbe Germans because he refused 



to continue bis courses in Flemish after the 

 Germans had taken tbe city and were trying 

 to remodel tbe university to be a Flemish in- 

 stitution. The government of Belgium has 

 now appointed Professor Fredericq lord rector 

 of the university. 



Dr. Jules Duesbeeg, will sever his con- 

 nections as a member of tbe faculty of the 

 Johns Hopkins University and will sail for 

 Belgium on February 12. Dr. Duesberg went 

 to Baltimore in 1915. He is is a native of 

 Liege and in 1911 was made professor of 

 anatomy at Liege University, where he wiU 

 now resume his work. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



ON MONKEYS TRAINED TO PICK COCO NUTS 



Readers of tbe Sunday editions of some of 

 our metropolitan papers may recall that in 

 the fall, tbe season of cotton picking in the 

 South, waggish space writers sometimes make 

 the suggestion that monkeys be trained to do 

 this work and that thereby the shortage of 

 labor be relieved. 



In this connection there have come imder 

 my notice during tbe past year accounts show- 

 ing that in a far distant part of tbe world 

 monkeys are trained to do service which, for 

 want of a better descriptive title, may be 

 called manual labor. The first of these is 

 from tbe well-known woman traveller, Isa- 

 bella Bird. In her interesting book " Tbe 

 Golden Chersonese and tbe Way Thither" 

 (1883) she writes on page 425 : 



A follower had brought a "baboon," an ape 

 or monkey trained to gather coconuts, a hideous 

 beast on very long legs when on all fours, but 

 capable of walking erect. They called him a 

 ' ' dog-faced baboon, ' ' but I think that they were 

 wrong. . . . He is fierce, but likes or at all events 

 obeys his owner, who held him with a rope fifty 

 feet long. At present he is only half tame, and 

 would go back to the jungle if liberated. He 

 was sent up a coconut tree which was heavily 

 loaded with nuts in various stages of ripeness 

 and unripeness, going up in surly fashion, look- 

 ing around at intervals and shaking his chain 

 angrily. When he got to the top he shook the 

 fronds and stalks, but no nuts fell, and he chose 



