788 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1065 



the Fish Commission Reports, lists of all the 

 dredging stations occupied by the vessels of the 

 United States and foreign countries, with all 

 the physical data obtained, thus forming a 

 valuable oceanographic work. 



A TELEGRAM received at the Harvard College 

 Observatory from Professor E. B. Frost, di- 

 rector of Terkes Observatory, Williams Bay, 

 Wisconsin, states that two companion bodies 

 have been found by Professor Barnard near 

 Mellish's Comet. One of these was conspicu- 

 ous, and had a distance of 28" and a position 

 angle of 285°, on May 12, at IQ" 36". The 

 other was faint, and occupied an intermediate 

 position in the same line. A cablegram re- 

 ceived at the observatory from Professor Elis 

 Stromgren, director of the University Observ- 

 atory, Copenhagen, Denmark, states that Dela- 

 van's Comet, the discovery of which was re- 

 cently announced, proves to be Tempel's 

 periodic comet. Ephemerides of this comet, 

 by Stromgren and Braae, are published in 

 Astronomische Nachrichten, No. 4792. 



Dr. Winford H. Smith, superintendent of 

 the Jolms Hopkins Hospital, has announced 

 & gift of $16,500, to be paid in three yearly in- 

 stallments, from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 

 to be used in a special social hygiene depart- 

 ment at the hospital, which is to be estab- 

 lished next September. The work of the new 

 clinic will be in charge of a committee con- 

 sisting of Dr. George H. Walker, chairman. 

 Dr. Theodore 0. Janeway and Dr. Winford H. 

 Smith. Dr. Albert Keiden, a graduate of the 

 Johns Hopkins Medical School, will be the 

 physician in charge of the new dispensary. 

 He will have four assistants. 



On account of the unfavorable state of the 

 finances of the country, due mostly to the 

 European war, the Peruvian government has 

 ordered the closing of the Museum of the Na- 

 tional History and Archeology at Lima. This 

 action is much to be regretted, for the archeo- 

 logical part of the museum was, in many re- 

 spects, the most important in South America. 



The annual meeting of the German Surgi- 

 cal Association was supposedly postponed on 

 account of the war, but we learn from the 



Journal of the American Medical Association 

 that the surgeon-general of the army sent out 

 a su mm ons for the meeting to be held at 

 Brussels. Hundreds of surgeons attended the 

 meeting, which commenced at Brussels on 

 April 7. All the sessions were devoted to mili- 

 tary surgery and a number of new points 

 learned from practical exjjerience were brought 

 out. Drs. Garre, Korte, Payr and Bier deliv- 

 ered the leading addresses. 



The fortieth annual meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Academy of Medicine will be held in San 

 Francisco, June 25 to 28, under the presidency 

 of Dr. John L. Heffron, of Syracuse, N. Y. 

 The sessions will be held in the Auditorium 

 Hall of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The 

 program will include addresses by the presi- 

 dent. Dr. Woods Hutchinson, and Dr. David 

 Starr Jordan. Dr. Jordan's address will be on 

 the Relation of Medicine to the Peace Move- 

 ment. 



TiJE glass used in this country for the man- 

 ufacture of lenses is practically all imported 

 except in the case of some of the smaller and 

 cheaper lenses. For several years past, the 

 Bureau of Standards, of the Department of 

 Commerce, has been endeavoring to persuade 

 the glass manufacturers of the United States 

 to take up the manufacture of this material, 

 but they have been unable to do so, partly be- 

 cause of the limited quantity used as com- 

 pared with other glass, but largely on account 

 of the varying composition required and the 

 difficulty of annealing the glass, as good op- 

 tical glass must be entirely free from strain. 

 With a view to working out some of the 

 underlying problems sufficiently to enable 

 manufacturers to start in this matter, the 

 Bureau secured two years ago an expert in- 

 terested in the composition and testing of 

 optical systems, and a little later secured 

 another man skilled in the working of glass to 

 the definite forms required by the theory. 

 These steps were taken first, partly because it 

 is exceedingly difficult to find men having 

 these qualifications, put principally because as 

 the work of experimental glass making prog- 

 resses, the glass must be put in the form of 

 lenses and prisms to test; in other words, the 



