904 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1068 



the old the young. These tragedies occur in 

 the warrens and are not conspicuous. There 

 is simply a diminished herd in the spring. It 

 will be but a fragment, a remnant, of a fox 

 herd which the government will possess when 

 the futile law suspending seal killing has run 

 its course three years hence. The irony of the 

 situation lies in the fact that the foxes, thus 

 cruelly and improvidently treated, yield skins 

 which in 1912 sold as high as one hundred and 

 fifty-eight dollars each. Had Mr. Jones re- 

 commended that the government send up beef 

 from Seattle or San Francisco to feed these 

 foxes over the winter, his recommendation 

 would have been one which the government 

 could well afford to consider favorably. 



No; the problem of the Pribilof Islands is 

 not one of bringing the comforts of civilized 

 surrounding to the officials and natives. It is 

 rather one of applying common horse sense to 

 the administration of the fur-seal industry. 

 The present ill-advised and wasteful law 

 should be repealed or amended. The fur-seal 

 herd stood ready to yield six hundred thousand 

 dollars worth of sealskins in 1914. Mr. Jones 

 might have had the satisfaction of seeing them 

 taken and their value covered into the treasury. 

 The law prevented it. He has no comment to 

 make. Incidentally the taking of these skins 

 would have given useful occupation to the 

 natives, restored to them and to the foxes their 

 wonted food, and richly earned for the officials 

 and natives of the islands any degree of gener- 

 ous treatment at the hands of the government. 



George Archibald Clark 

 Stanford Univeesitt, 

 California 



a safe method of using mercury bichloride 



for the antisepsis of wounds of 



large surface 



Some years ago the writer developed what 

 appears to be an entirely safe and very effec- 

 tive method of making antiseptic extensively 

 lacerated areas. Briefly (and I am afraid in 

 very untechnical language) the results of the 

 experiments were as follows: 



1. The reason mercury bichloride is danger- 

 ous is that it combines with the albumen ( ?) 



of the exposed surface of the wound. Tor ex- 

 ample, if a liter of 1 to 1,000 solution be used 

 to bathe a wound of extensive surface, all the 

 bichloride (roughly speaking), amounting to 

 a gram in weight, is precipitated out of the 

 solution and remains in the wound in the form 

 of albuminate of mercury, which is later re- 

 dissolved and absorbed. Hence the subsequent 

 poisoning. 



2. If, however, the wound be first bathed 

 with a solution having a stronger affinity for 

 albumen than mercury (a dilute solution of 

 chloride of zinc, and other metallic chlorides, 

 was found to give good results) especially one 

 which gives a granular but coherent com- 

 pound, and is then bathed with water and 

 finally with a 1 to 1,000 solution of mercury 

 bichloride, not left in too long, the antisepsis 

 is perfect and there are no bad after-effects. 

 The albumen having combined with the zinc 

 to form albuminate of zinc, seems to be no 

 longer able to quickly combine with the mer- 

 cury. 



3. That mercury bichloride is a much 

 stronger antiseptic relatively to other anti- 

 septics than is stated in the text-books. 



4. That antiseptics mixed with oils or fats, 

 vaseline for example, lose their effectiveness 

 almost entirely. 



The importance of the matter at the present 

 time (there is no known way of effectively 

 disinfecting wounds received in battle) and the 

 fact that the results were forwarded to the 

 Lancet and Nature some years ago but not 

 printed or acknowledged is my excuse for ask- 

 ing you to publish this rather crude and in- 

 complete note. 



Eeginald a. Fessenden 



Bkookline, Mass. 



a solar halo 

 To THE Editor op Science : On the morning 

 of May 20 an interesting solar halo was ob- 

 served in the vicinity of Philadelphia, which 

 was sufficiently unusual to be worthy of record. 

 When observed between 11 a.m. and noon the 

 appearance was as indicated in the accompany- 

 ing diagram. A and B were two prismatic 

 circles concentric with the sun, of radii (meas- 



