Febbuaet 12, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



241 



all the resident medical staff volunteered. On 

 two occasions it had been impossible for mem- 

 bers of the honorary staff to see all the out- 

 patients. He had gone to London again, and 

 did the round of the medical schools. He could 

 not find a single man who wanted employment 

 as a doctor, and theirs was not the only hos- 

 pital in such a position. They had had to fall 

 back on medical women. But though obtain- 

 able, they too were scarce. Their resident 

 staff now consists of one man and three 

 women. 



Mr. Wm. Baeclay Parsons has written to 

 the editor of the New York Times as follows : 

 " The recent accomplishing of transmitting 

 speech between New York and San Francisco 

 is an event that rightly has attracted public 

 attention. It is an achievement of the very 

 highest importance, and reflects great credit 

 on all concerned. It is, however, a matter of 

 great surprise that in no ISTew York newspaper 

 that I have seen has any mention been made 

 of the man to whom the scientific honor is 

 wholly due. Even the president himseK con- 

 gratulated Mr. Bell upon his accomplishment, 

 overlooking the fact that the instruments used 

 to send and receive the first transcontinental 

 message were those used forty years ago, show- 

 ing that whatever advance was indicated by 

 the transmission of speech over 3,400 miles of 

 wire was not due to the instruments at the ends. 

 This great and heretofore never-accomplished 

 feat is due entirely to the work of Professor 

 Michael I. Pupin, of Columbia University, 

 who, by certain simple devices, has made pos- 

 sible the use of long wires in telephony. Al- 

 though the devices themselves are simple, their 

 design was reached only after the most pains- 

 taking and elaborate mathematical analysis. 

 The final result is intensely practical, but it is 

 based on work of the highest order of pure 

 science." 



With a view of acquainting the public with 

 the standards, and the results of recent ex- 

 periments conducted on standardized raw 

 cotton, the division of textiles of the IT. S. 

 National Museum has recently placed on ex- 

 hibition in the cotton section the nine official 

 grades of white American upland raw cotton; 



also a series of samples of the waste cotton 

 obtained from standardized graded cotton, 

 and samples of No. 22's warp yam made from 

 the five standard full grades of raw upland 

 cotton. The principal factors which mark 

 the grade of a cotton are (1) the foreign mat- 

 ter or impurities, such as broken leaves, dirt, 

 sand, strings, motes, naps, gin-cut fiber, etc., 

 contained therein, and (2) color. The differ- 

 ences between the several grades can be deter- 

 mined only by the trained eye, but the lower- 

 ing of the grade due to increasing amounts of 

 foreign matter can be made evident by show- 

 ing the actual amount of waste material ob- 

 tained from a definite quantity of cotton. To 

 demonstrate these differences, a certain quan- 

 tity of graded cotton was carried through the 

 regular operations preparatory to spinning, 

 the amount of waste produced in each opera- 

 tion being carefully preserved, labeled and ar- 

 ranged in exhibition boxes. The series of 

 samples illustrating these experiments, now 

 on exhibition in the National Museum, begins 

 with a box containing four samples, each of 

 the five full grades of Standard Atlantic States 

 Upland Cotton, showing " Good Ordinary," 

 "Low Middling," "Middling," "Good Mid- 

 dling " and " Middling Fair," the last of which 

 is the highest grade. The second series illus- 

 trates upland cotton picker waste, and com- 

 prises one sample from each of the five full 

 grades of standard upland cotton extracted by 

 the machines employed in opening and prepar- 

 ing raw cotton for the carding machine. The 

 picker waste is thrown out by the four follow- 

 ing machines: the preparer or opener, the 

 breaker, the intermediate and the finisher. 

 The third series comprises a box containing 

 one sample each of card motes, card fly and 

 card strippings, from the five full grades of 

 standard upland cotton, and shows the matter 

 thrown out as waste in carding raw cotton. 

 The final box includes one sample of yam 

 spun from gray and bleached raw stock of each 

 of the five grades of standardized eastern and 

 western upland cotton and comprises 20 sam- 

 ples in all. Although the standard grades of 

 cotton were established by the government 

 some time ago, this is the first exhibit show- 



