May 23, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



489 



tion to Congress by January, 1920. The 

 members of the Commission are Senators 

 Jones (chairman), Henderson and Spencer, 

 and former Eepresentatives Keating (secre- 

 tary). Cooper and Hamlin. The commission 

 is doing the work through central committees 

 on which the commission, the administrative 

 officers and the employees (through their or- 

 ganizations) are represented. Thus it is ex- 

 pected that misunderstandings will be avoided 

 or removed as they arise, and that the com- 

 pleted work may receive the support of all the 

 interests concerned. 



The work of this commission seems bound to 

 have a profound influence on the scientific 

 services of the government for a decade or 

 more, no less from the point of view of the 

 government than from that of the individual. 

 Its influence will not stop with the govern- 

 ment service, but will extend indirectly to 

 practically all scientific laboratories, college, 

 university, industrial, state, and municipal. 

 By cooperating, by furnishing data from sim- 

 ilar studies that may have been made in other 

 organizations, men in such laboratories can 

 do their colleagues in the federal departments 

 a very real serWce, and a service to the cause 

 of science and to the fraternity as well. Gen- 

 eral arguments will not be useful. What is 

 needed is comparative data, such for example 

 as salary studies made by universities, or sta- 

 tistical studies of the investment equivalent 

 of a university training, the accuracy of which 

 can be vouched for. The commission is under- 

 taking the problem in the same spirit that is 

 necessary in an investigation in chemistry or 

 in biology. 



E. H. True, Chairman, 

 Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 P. G. Agxew, Secretary, 

 Bureau of Standards 



Washington, 

 May 12, 1919 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



A BRITISH GEODETIC AND GEODYNAMIC 

 INSTITUTE" 



A COMMITTEE, consisting of Dr. Shipley (the 

 Vice-Chaneellor), Dr. H. K. Anderson, Col. 

 1 From Nature. 



Sir C. F. Close, Sir Horace Darwin, Sir F. W. 

 Dyson, Dr. E. H. Griffiths, Sir T. H. Holdich, 

 Sir Joseph Larmor, Col. H. G. Lyons, Pro- 

 fessor Newall, Sir Charles Parsons, Sir Napier 

 Shaw, Sir J. J. Thomson and Professor H. H. 

 Turner, has been formed for the purpose of 

 making an appeal for the creation and endow- 

 ment of a geophysical institute at Cambridge. 

 The question of the establishment of an insti- 

 tute of this character has been under consider- 

 ation by the British Association for the last 

 three years. A large and representative com- 

 mittee reported unanimously in favor of the 

 project, which was then considered by the Con- 

 joint Board of Scientific Societies. This 

 Board also reported that there was a real need 

 for such an institute. The chief reasons 

 which have been put forward on behalf of the 

 scheme are : (1) Geodetic work must form the 

 basis and control of all the state surveys of 

 the empire, on which about a million sterling 

 was spent annually before the war. (2) A 

 geophysical institute could render great assist- 

 ance in connection with the particular group 

 of geodetic problems now of most practical in- 

 terest in the Unitod Kingdom, namely those 

 associated with leveling, mean sea-level, and 

 vertical movements of the crust of the earth. 



(3) Such an institute is greatly needed to 

 assist in the study of the tides and in attack- 

 ing the great problems which must be solved 

 if tidal prediction is to advance beyond its 

 present elementary and fragmentary state. 



(4) There is at present no provision for the 

 collection and critical discussion of the geo- 

 detic work which is being done within the 

 Empire, or for its comparison with the work 

 of other countries. There is no institution 

 available for research work or higher training 

 in geodesy. There is no British institution 

 which can be referred to for the latest tech- 

 nical data and methods, and until the out- 

 break of the war it was the custom of many 

 British suireys (notably the sun-cj' of India), 

 when confronted with geodetic problems, to 

 refer to the Geodetic Institute at Potsdam. 

 This was not even then a very satisfactory ar- 

 rangement, and now a radical change is in- 

 evitable. 



