Mat 11, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



453 



demonstrable sciences." The association had 

 accumulated a fund of about $25,000, mainly 

 from the fees of fellows, life members and 

 members. The income from these funds being 

 available for grants for research, the sum of 

 $4,000 was, at the New York meeting of the 

 association, on the recommendation of the 

 treasurer, set aside for this purpose by the 

 council, to be expended during the year 1917. 

 The following committee on Grants for Ee- 

 search was at the same time appointed: E. C. 

 Pickering, astronomy and mathematics, chair- 

 man; Henry Crew, physics; E. C. Franklin, 

 chemistry; E. T. Chamberlin, geology and 

 geography; W. B. Cannon, zoological sciences; 

 N. L. Britton, botanical sciences; J. McKeen 

 Cattell, psychology and anthropology, secre- 

 tary. 



This committee, after a considerable amount 

 of correspondence, met in Washington on 

 April 15 and 16, there being present Messrs. 

 Pickering, Cannon, Crew and Cattell; Mr. 

 E. A. Harper was present to represent Mr. 

 Britton for grants in botany. The following 

 general rules of procedure were adopted, based 

 on the report of the committee on the Colburn 

 and other research funds, presented by Mr. 

 Pickering to the committee on policy at its 

 meeting in New York on September 30, 1916 : 



1. Applications for grants may be made to the 

 member of the committee representing the science 

 in which the work falls or to the chairman or sec- 

 retary of the committee. The committee will not 

 depend upon applications, but will make inquiry as 

 to the way in which research funds can be best ex- 

 pended to promote the advancement of science. 

 In such inquiry the committee hopes to have the 

 cooperation of scientific men and especially of the 

 sectional committees of the association and of the 

 subcommittees of the Committee of One Hundred 

 on Research of the association. 



2. The committee will meet at the time of the 

 annual meeting of the association or on the call of 

 the chairman. Business may be transacted and 

 grants may be made by correspondence. In such 

 cases the rules of procedure formulated by Mr. 

 Pickering and printed in the issue of Science for 

 May 23, 1913, will be followed. 



3. Grants may be made to residents of any coun- 

 try, but preference wiU be given to residents of 

 America. 



4. Grants of sums of $500 or less are favored, 

 but larger appropriations may be made. In some 

 cases appropriations may be guaranteed for several 

 years in advance. 



5. Grants as a rule wUl be made for work which 

 ■ could not be done or would be very difScult to do 



without the grant. A grant wiU not ordiaarily be 

 made to defray living expenses. 



6. The committee will not imdertake to supervise 

 in any way the work done by those who receive the 

 grants. Unless otherwise provided, any apparatus 

 or materials purchased will be the property of the 

 individual receiving the grant. 



7. No restriction is made as to publication, but 

 the recipient of the grant should in the publication 

 of his work acknowledge the aid given by the fund. 



8. The recipient of the grant is expected to make 

 to the secretary of the committee a report in De- 

 cember of each year while the work is in progress 

 and a final report when the work is completed and 

 published. Each report should be accompanied by 

 a financial statement of expenditures, with vouch- 

 ers for the larger items when these can be sup- 

 plied without difficulty. 



9. The purposes for which grants are made and 

 the grounds for making them will be published. 



At the meetings of the committee held in 

 Washington on April 15 and 16, 1917, the 

 following grants were made: 



ASTRONOMY 



Pive hundred dollars to Professor Philip Pox, of 

 Evanston, Illinois, for the measurement and reduc- 

 tion of the photographic plates taken at the Dear- 

 born Observatory for determining stellar parallax. 



PHYSICS 



One hundred dollars to Professor F. C. Blake, of 

 Ohio State University, in aid of his well-known 

 work on electric waves. The particular problem 

 which Professor Blake has in hand is to determine 

 how the capacity of an air condenser, consisting of 

 a pair of circular plates, varies with the distance 

 separating the plates. The frequency of the cur- 

 rent used is of the order of one hundred million 

 alternations per second. The distance separating 

 the plates is varied from a smaU fraction of the 

 radius to more than four times the radius. 



Three hundred dollars to Professor Richard C. 

 Tolman, of the University of Illinois, for further 

 testing and extending his already published work 

 on the E.M.F. produced in a conductor subjected 

 to mechanical acceleration. The problem is essen- 



