January 15, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



89 



with whicli lie dealt. He would have heen de- 

 lighted, had he lived, to recognize the bearing 

 of recent advances in science on the medicine 

 of the tropics. Sir Eonald Eoss devoted the 

 main part of his lecture to tracing the history 

 of the modern application of parasitology to 

 etiology and pathology, dealing in particular 

 with the growth of knowledge with regard to 

 filaria, piroplasma and the malarial organisms. 

 He sketched his own researches, the full his- 

 tory of which had, he said, been given in his 

 Nobel lecture. It was only after several years' 

 work that he recognized that the malarial in- 

 fection was carried by a certain genus of 

 mosquitoes only, not by Culex or Stegomyia, 

 but by the anophelines. He made the obser- 

 vation that the spores of the analogous malarial 

 parasites of birds which he had already recog- 

 nized in Culex entered the insect's salivary or 

 poison glands. This led to the disclosure of 

 the full truth, namely, that the parasites were 

 not only taken from man by the mosquitoes, 

 as Manson had supposed, and not only put 

 into man by the mosquitoes, as King supposed, 

 but that both hypotheses were true, the insects 

 carrying the parasites directly from man to 

 man. Summarizing the results obtained, he 

 said that from the time of the Romans it was 

 known that the malarial fevers were connected 

 with marshes and stagnant water in warm 

 countries. Later, when it was seen that the 

 disease was not confined to the proximity of 

 marshes, the theorists conceived that there 

 was a telluric poison which caused malaria 

 and was especially abundant in damp places. 

 All this was a very general proposition ; and in 

 order to prevent the disease, it was necessary 

 to undertake very extensive drainage. The 

 new knowledge obtained rendered it possible 

 to particularize the exact route of infection. 

 It was now known that the poison was not 

 spread uniformly in the air of warm countries, 

 but was always contained in the minute bodies 

 of certain insects, and more than that, in the 

 still more minute salivary glands of these 

 creatures. The discovery of the full life-cycle 

 of the parasites laade it possible not only to 

 predicate the route of infection, but to deter- 

 mine exactly which species of mosquitoes were 



concerned, and to study the habits of the in- 

 culpated species. The genera Culex and 

 Stegomyia, which it was found did not carry 

 the malarial parasite, breed most commonly in 

 artificial collections of water around houses, 

 the anophelines breed principally in natural 

 collections of water such as marshes, puddles, 

 streamlets and the edges of lakes, ponds and 

 rivers. These observations showed the way to 

 other inquiries which cleared up the epidemi- 

 ology of yellow fever, sleeping sickness, tick 

 fever, plague and might possibly throw light 

 on that of dengue, Mediterranean fever and 

 measles. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



At the meeting of the American Society of 

 Naturalists, held on December 31, 1914, Pro- 

 fessor Hugo DeVries and Professor Wilhelm 

 Eoux were elected to honorary membership. 



SiGNOR GuGLiELMO Maeconi has been ap- 

 pointed a member of the Italian senate by 

 King Victor Emmanuel. 



It is one of the privileges of the Spanish 

 Academia de Medicina that it is entitled to a 

 seat in the senate. The member of the acad- 

 emy recently elected senator in this way is 

 Dr. B. G. Alvarez, one of the editors of the 

 Pediatria Espanol. 



Dr. Charles R. Van Hise, president of the 

 University of Wisconsin, has been elected presi- 

 dent of the Utilities Bureau, established as an 

 agency for municipalities in their dealings 

 with public utility companies. 



De. Raymond Pearl, of the Maine Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station, has been elected a 

 member of the editorial board of the Journal 

 of Experimental Zoology. 



The American Institute of Mining Engi- 

 neers, the American Electrochemical Society 

 and the Mining and Metallurgical Society of 

 America are giving a complimentary dinner 

 on Friday, January 15, at the Hotel Plaza to 

 Dr. Frederick Gardner Cottrell, in charge of 

 the San Erancisco laboratory of the Bureau of 

 Mines, in recognition of his contributions to 

 research. It is well known that Dr. Cottrell 

 assigned the patents for his process of electro- 



