434 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 376. 



fessional should be glad of all the support, 

 moral and financial, which he can secure 

 throughout the conmiunity, while there are 

 many students who wish to keep advised of 

 all progress as it is made. 



Let the 'professionals' constitute the 'mem- 

 bers' of the Society and let the test for 'mem- 

 bership' be as rigid as may be found neces- 

 sary, so that being a member shall constitute 

 prima facie evidence to the world of estab- 

 lished professional ability and experience. 



Let there also be a class of 'associates,' who 

 shall include any respectable person of legal 

 age (duly elected) who desires to join and is 

 willing to pay the established dues. 



All members should be elected as associates 

 and any associate should have at all times 

 the privilege of applying to a 'board of exam- 

 iners' for election to full membership. 



This course of procedure has been found 

 satisfactory in the American Institute of 

 Electrical Engineers and in other engineering 

 bodies. It preserves to the professional all 

 the honor and exclusiveness which he can 

 desire, yet serves to draw into a compact and 

 powerful organization all who for any reason 

 wish to keep in touch with the most recent 

 advances. 



Such afi inclusive policy would seem to be 

 the wise course for all of our scientific socie- 

 ties, each of which is supposed to exist for the 

 purpose of educating the public at large and 

 of arousing a widespread interest in its 

 specialty as well as for the benefit of its pro- 

 fessional mem.bers. 



J. Staxford Brown. 



New York City. 



the physiological effects of the electrical 

 charge of ions. 

 In No. 374 of Science Professor Lee gives a 

 review of the Chicago meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Physiological Society in which he says 

 that I 'maintained that vital phenomena, in 

 general, are caused by the electrical charges of 

 ions.' I wish to state that I have never held 

 nor expressed such an opinion. 



Jacque^ Loeb. 

 The University of Chicago, 

 March 3, 1902. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

 In proposing the toast, 'The Houses of Par- 

 liament,' at the annual dinner of the fellows 

 and associates of the Institute of Chemistry 

 held in London last December, Professor Ram- 

 say referred to the recent jubilee of Professor 

 Berthelot in Paris and the cooperation of the 

 French government with the scientific socie- 

 ties in honoring the distinguished chemist. 

 He then said that while the British govern- 

 ment often has occasion to take the advice of 

 scientific experts, it does not as a rule honor 

 science generally in the persons of those who 

 have most distinguished themselves, as is done 

 in many other countries. He called attention 

 to the work of the chemists of the United 

 States Geological Survey, and regretted that 

 this example is not followed by the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain. Touching upon the 

 question of water supplies, he gave it as his 

 opinion that, valuable as the bacteriological 

 examination of water is, it must be looked 

 upon as merely confirmatory of the examina- 

 tion of the chemist. In responding to this 

 toast for the House of Commons, Mr. Han- 

 bury remarked incidentally that science would 

 be of incomparably more practical value if its 

 'hideous terminology' could be done away 

 with. 



The question of the existence of the ammo- 

 nium radical, NH^, has been very exhaustively 

 studied by Hoissan, whose results are pub- 

 lished in the Comptes Rendus and in the Ar- 

 chives Neerlandaises. His methods included 

 the electrolysis of ammonium chlorid and am- 

 monium iodid in solution in liquid ammonia, 

 the examination of ammonium amalgam at a 

 temperature as low as — 90°, where the amalgam 

 is perfectly stable, and the action of liquid 

 hydrogen sulfid on lithium-ammonium and 

 calcium-ammonium at — 75°. In none of the 

 experiments was any evidence of free ammo- 

 nium found, incidentally confirming the 

 recent results of Ruff. Moissan believes, how- 

 ever, that under some circumstances a hydrid 

 of ammonium, NHJT, is capable of existence. 



The passivity of iron has been studied from 

 the standpoint of physical chemistry by Fink- 

 elstein. Determinations of its polarization 



