June 24, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



963 



above a high basement, and measures 340 feet 

 front by nearly 200 feet in depth. All along 

 the front are arranged small rooms for re- 

 search, rooms for the professors and assistants, 

 a library, etc.; these open into a private cor- 

 ridor, so that the men employed in these rooms 

 may pursue their work without interruption 

 from students passing through the main halls. 

 The second floor is devoted exclusively to 

 pathology. The entire north front of the 

 building is devoted to laboratories for ad- 

 vanced students in pathology and pathologic 

 bacteriology, and to the special research and 

 assistants' rooms. — American Medicine. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 

 ADIRONDACK PLANTS. 



Mrs. Annie Morrill Smith publishes in 

 the 'Adirondack League Club Tear Book' a 

 corrected and enlarged list of plants found on 

 the Adirondack League Club Tract, in which 

 are enumerated 455 species, distributed as 

 follows: Lichens, 29; hepaties, 40; mosses, 82; 

 ferns and their allies, 27 ; conifers, 11 ; flower- 

 ing plants, 266. The nomenclature of the 

 higher plants is that of Britten's ' Manual.' 

 The list has been reprinted in a neat twenty- 

 page pamphlet. The botanists of the club are 

 to be congratulated upon this evidence of their 

 activity in the field. 



ALGAE m WATER SUPPLIES. 



George T. Moore and Karl F. Kellerman, 

 of the Division of Plant Physiology of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, 

 have prepared a bulletin on the algae in water 

 supplies which has been issued by the Bureau 

 of Plant Industry (as No. 64). It appears 

 that the investigation was first begun in order 

 to find some cheap and practical method of 

 preventing or removing the algal contamina- 

 tion of cress beds. This naturally extended 

 to all cases of algal contamination of waters, 

 including such growths in reservoirs in con- 

 nection with water supplies for cities and 

 towns. The importance of the matter is such 

 that a preliminary publication is made in this 

 bulletin in order that what has been found out 

 as to preventives and remedies may be laid 

 before boards of health and officers in charge 

 of public water supplies. 



It is here shown that ' it is entirely prac- 

 ticable to cheaply and quickly destroy objec- 

 tionable algse in small lakes, ponds, storage 

 reservoirs and other similar bodies of water 

 by the use of extremely dilute solutions of 

 copper sulphate or of metallic copper.' Al- 

 though copper sulphate is a poison it is to be 

 used in such very dilute solutions as to render 

 it harmless to man or other higtier organisms. 

 In the tests made in the cress beds it was pos- 

 sible to kill all of the algae without injuring 

 the cress, and still the solutions were so dilute 

 that they were ' not considered injurious to 

 man or other animals.' 



The bulletin devotes some pages to the 

 microscopical examination of drinking water, 

 the wide distribution of trouble caused by 

 algse, the methods hitherto used for the abate- 

 ment of the nuisance, the difliculties encoun- 

 tered, and then takes up the examination of 

 the effects of various strengths of copper sul- 

 phate on different organisms. Among the 

 organisms experimented with are Chlamydo- 

 monaSj Raphidium, Besmidium, Btigeoclo- 

 niurrij Draparnaldia, Navicula, Bcenedesmus, 

 Euglena, Spirogyra, Conferva,, Closierium, 

 8ynura, Andbaena and Uroglena. Some of 

 these were killed in solutions as dilute as one 

 part of copper sulphate to three million parts 

 of water, while others endured solutions as 

 strong as 1 to 2,000. It is evident that in 

 order to apply this remedy the organisms must 

 be fully knovsm, and the authors emphasize the 

 statement that it is impossible to tell what 

 strength of solution to use without a thorough 

 study of the organisms in any particular case. 

 Incidentally they find that such treatment of 

 the water supply is likely to destroy many 

 pathogenic bacteria and also the larvae of 

 mosquitoes. 



STRUCTURE OF THE PLANT NUCLEOLUS. 



Harold Wager discusses the structure of 

 the nucleolus of the cells of the bean {Phase- 

 olus) in the January number of the Annals 

 of Botany, and concludes ' that not only is the 

 nucleolus concerned in the formation of the 

 chromosomes, but that there is a definite mor- 

 phological connection between them.' He 

 says further that " it is found that the nucle- 



