March 2, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



209 



sity of Chicago has recently been made by the 

 installation of wireless telegraph apparatus. 

 The aerial will be stretched between the mast 

 on Eyerson Laboratory and a similar one on 

 Mitchell Tower, making available approxi- 

 mately a height of 140 feet and a length of 

 425 feet for the aerial conductor. This will 

 consist of eight wires, each made of seven 

 strands, which, including leads into the build- 

 ing, will require nearly six miles of phosphor 

 bronze wire. The mounting and insulation 

 will be most fully provided for in order to 

 withstand a pull of three thousand pounds, 

 which a heavy wind on ice-covered wires might 

 produce; and also to make the electrical leak- 

 age negligibly small even when using the 20,- 

 000 volts which will be employed in transmis- 

 sion experiments. 



The first transmitter will be of five kilo- 

 watts capacity, which will be sufficient for the 

 present, though not suitable for transoceanic 

 communication. The important parts of this 

 apparatus are being made in the Ryerson Labo- 

 ratory and already preliminary tests have 

 shovrn that a high degree of efficiency will be 

 attained. 



All types of receiving instruments will be 

 used and the excellent character of the aerial 

 will make it possible to receive and experi- 

 ment with the radiations from all the high- 

 powered stations of the United States and 

 with many of those of the European nations. 

 Eesearch work has already been started and 

 arrangements made to carry on work in co- 

 operation with another university as soon as 

 the installation of the Ryerson apparatus is 

 completed. Courses on the theory of wireless 

 telegraphy and telephony coordinated with elec- 

 trical measurements will be given during the 

 coming summer quarter. 



Associate Professor Carl Kinsley, of the 

 department of physics at the University of 

 Chicago, who prepared the substance of the 

 foregoing statement, was for several years 

 an electrical expert for the "War Department 

 and devised a wireless system, which was the 

 first to be accepted by the United States gov- 

 ernment and is now in use by the San Fran- 

 cisco wireless station. Professor Kinsley has 



been connected with the University of Chicago 

 for fifteen years. 



THE LEASE OF THE TROPICAL BOTANICAL 

 STATION AT CINCHONA 



The botanical station at Cinchona, in the 

 Blue Mountains of Jamaica, formerly leased 

 for ten years by the ISTew York Botanical 

 Garden, has now been leased by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, on behalf of fourteen 

 American botanists and botanical institutions 

 that have contributed the rental. These bot- 

 anists and institutions believe there is need in 

 the American tropics of a counterpart of the 

 famous Buitenzorg Garden in Java. They 

 hope the opening of this laboratory at Cin- 

 chona may prove as stimulating to the devel- 

 opment of botany in this country as the op- 

 portunities afforded at Buitenzorg have to the 

 advance of this science in Europe. 



The equipment available at the station con- 

 sists of the residence, with its furnishings; of 

 three laboratory buildings, two glass propa- 

 gating houses and a garden of ten acres, con- 

 taining scores of species of exotic shrubs and 

 trees, besides many native plants from the 

 highlands of Jamaica. The occupant of Cin- 

 chona is also free, within reasonable bounds, 

 to study and collect plants over the many 

 thousand acres of the whole Cinchona reser- 

 vation, as well as in the neighboring valleys 

 belonging to private owners. He will likewise 

 be given every available facility for study at 

 Hope Gardens, where he will find a herba- 

 rium, a library and an extensive collection of 

 tropical plants. The same privilege will be 

 his at Castleton Garden which contains a 

 splendid collection of cycads, of palms, and 

 of Ficus and other dicotyledonous trees. 



The many different types of native vegeta- 

 tion accessible from Cinchona and from Hope, 

 include a number of great ecological interest 

 and numerous species of importance for the 

 morphologist, cytologist and physiologist. The 

 ecological types range from the tree ferns, 

 epiphytes and water-soaked filmy ferns of the 

 cool mountain forest to the hot, steaming 

 woods of the lowlands of the north side at one 

 extreme and to the dry savannahs and cactus 

 deserts near Kingston at the other. Fuller 



