May 30, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



513 



eearch during the absence of Colonel Walter 

 Dill Scott on ■war service, has been released 

 from these duties for work in educational 

 research, through the return to Pittsburgh of 

 Colonel Scott. At the close of the present 

 academic year, however. Colonel Scott will 

 devote himself to commercial practise as 

 consultant on industrial personnel and will 

 then give only a limited portion of his time 

 to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. 

 Dr. Beardsley RumI, who was on leave of ab- 

 sence with the War Department as head of 

 the Trade Test Standardization Division of 

 the Committee on Classification of Person- 

 nel, has resigned his position at Carnegie to 

 enter commercial practise with the Scott 

 Company. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

 A TESTIMONIAL dinner to Dr. N. L. Britton, 

 director of the New York Botanical Garden, 

 given by the managers at the Metropolitan 

 Club on the evening of May 7, was attended by 

 men of science from all parts of the country. 

 Dr. D. T. MacDougal, director of the Desert 

 Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington acted as toastmaster, and speeches 

 reviewing the history of the organization of 

 the garden by Dr. Britton twenty-three years 

 ago, and of his widely inclusive and important 

 researches were made by Dr. W. Gilman 

 Thompson, president of the board; Professor 

 R. A. Harper, chairman of the scientific di- 

 rectors; Professor H. F. Osborn, president of 

 the American Museum of Natural History; 

 Provost William H. Carpenter, of Columbia 

 University; Dr. Arthur HoUick, director of the 

 Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, 

 and Professor Geo. T. Moore, director of the 

 Missouri Botanical Garden, at St. Louis. At 

 the conclusion of the ceremonies Mr. Robert 

 DeForest presented Dr. Britton with a loving 

 cup appropriately inscribed on behalf of the 

 board of managers. Congratulatory letters 

 and telegrams from distinguished scientific 

 men were read. 



Dr. Theodore W. Richards, professor of 

 chemistry at Harvard University, has been 



elected president of the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences. 



Professor Paul P. Boyd, dean of the collie 

 of arts and sciences at the University of Ken- 

 tucky, has been elected president of the Ken- 

 tucky Academy of Science. 



Rear Admiral John E. Pillsbury, U. S. N., 

 has been elected president of the National Geo- 

 graphic Society. 



The John Fritz Medal of the four national 

 societies of civil mining, mechanical and 

 electrical engineering has been awarded to 

 Major General George W. Goethals, for his 

 achievement in the building of the Panama 

 Canal. The presentation was made on May 22 

 by Ambrose Swasey, past president of the 

 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 

 The speakers included W. L. Saunders, past 

 president of the American Institute of Mining 

 and Metallurgical Engineers; Henry L. Stim- 

 son, former secretary of war, and Colonel G. I. 

 Fieberger, of West Point. Among those to 

 whom the medal has been awarded in former 

 years are: Lord Kelvin, for his work in cable 

 telegraphy; Alexander Graham Bell, for the 

 invention of the telephone; George Westing- 

 house, for the invention of the airbrake; 

 Thomas A. Edison, for the invention of the 

 duplex and quadruplex telegraph, and other 

 devices, and Sir William H. White, for 

 achievements in naval architecture. 



Dr. C. G. Abbot, of the Astrophysical Ob- 

 servatory, Smithsonian Institution, sailed for 

 South America on May 1, to inspect the 

 Smithsonian solar constant observing station 

 at Calama, Chile, and to observe the total 

 solar eclipse at La Paz, Bolivia. He exijecta 

 to return to Washington in August. 



The following members of the Princeton 

 University faculty have returned from service 

 abroad: Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Trow- 

 bridge (Engineers), professor of physics; 

 Captain E. P. Adams, Royal Engineers, Brit- 

 ish E.\peditionary Force, professor of mathe- 

 matical physics, and Captain H. L. Cook, also 

 of the Royal Engineers, assistant professor of 

 physics. 



