May 30, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



515 



tute of Buenos Aires, has been reappointed in 

 a recent decree reorganizing the institution. 

 The sections and the individuals in charge are: 

 hygiene. Dr. Carbonncll; plague, Dr. Uriarte; 

 serotherapy. Dr. Sordelli; physics and chem- 

 istry, Dr. Wernicke; experimental physiology 

 and pathology. Dr. Houssay; medical zoology, 

 Dr. Bachmann, and parasitology, Dr. Wolff- 

 hugel. 



Professor I. Newton Kugelmass, head of 

 the department of chemistry at Howard Col- 

 lege, addressed the Southern Child Health 

 Association on " Applied Nutrition for Eaising 

 the Standard of Child Vitality in the Service 

 of the Newer National Domism," in Birming- 

 ham, on May 1. 



At the London meeting of the Institute of 

 Metals on May 19, Professor F. Soddy, F.E.S., 

 delivered the ninth annual May lecture on 

 " Radio- Activity." 



Professor J. H. Jeans, F.R.S., delivered a 

 lecture on " The Quantum Theory and New 

 Theories of Atomic Structure " at a meeting 

 of the Chemical Society in London on May 1. 



Dr. Aaron Aaronson, agricultural expert, 

 of Haifa, Palestine, was killed in a fall of an 

 airplane on May 15, near Boulogne, while fly- 

 ing from London to Paris. Dr. Aaronsohn 

 had been a technical adviser of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. 



The next annual meeting of the American 

 Chemical Society will be held in Philadelphia, 

 from September 2 to 6, inclusive. The Phila- 

 delphia section is already planning to con- 

 tinue the rising curve of success and attend- 

 ance for the meeting next fall. 



Surgeon-General Ireland has authorized 

 during the present '' emergency," the prep- 

 aration and application of psychological tests 

 to recruits, that men of low mentality may be 

 barred from the army. 



The thirty-fifth anniversary of the estab- 

 lishment of the Bureau of Animal Industry 

 of the Department of Agriculture occurred on 

 May 9. When the bureau began operations in 

 1884 it had a staff of less than twenty em- 

 ployees; it has now more than 5,200, working 

 through thirteen divisions and oflSces. 



Homer P. Ritter, for many years an officer 

 of the United States Coast and Geodetic Sur- 

 vey and a member of the Mississippi River 

 Commission, died at Washington, D. C, April 

 21, 1919. He was returning from a meeting of 

 the Mississippi River Commission at Memphis 

 and was taken ill on the train. On his arrival 

 at Washington, on Saturday morning, he was 

 taken to the Emergency Hospital, and died 

 thera Mr. Ritter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, 

 March 4, 1855. He attended the high school 

 in Cleveland from 1869 to 1873 and Columbia 

 College School of Mines from 1878 to 1880. 

 He was afterwards employed for several years 

 on railway surveys. He entered the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey in 1865; was appointed an 

 assistant in 1895, and continued in the service 

 until the time of his death. Mr. Ritter had 

 been employed on field work in all parts of the 

 United States and in Alaska and his last duty 

 was in charge of the Field Station of the Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, at Boston, Massachu- 

 setts. 



Professor Joel Stebbins, secretary of the 

 American Astronomical Society, writes : " In 

 Science for May 10 there is an announcement 

 that representatives of certain foreign observa- 

 tories will be at the meeting of the American 

 Astronomical Society at Ann Arbor on Sep- 

 tember 1. This is a mistake because so far 

 as known to the officers of the society there 

 will be no such representation from abroad." 

 The erroneous statement was taken from the 

 Michigan Alnmniis. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 



NEWS 

 The seismological library of Count F. de 

 Montessus de Ballore. director of the Seismo- 

 logical Service of Chile, has recently been pur- 

 chased by Dr. J. C. Branner and presented to 

 Stanford University. This is probably one of 

 the most complete collections of seismological 

 literature in existence and it is accompanied 

 by a manuscript catalogue containing nearly 

 5,000 titles. 



The department of medicine of the Univer- 

 sity of Toronto is to be the recipient of a gift 



