318 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 558. 



by the railroads was to be made during the 

 morning of the eighteenth, but a few days 

 before that Mr. Allen wrote Professor Abbe, 

 saying that he feared some embarrassment if 

 the Harvard College Observatory'should fail to 

 change its public time signals, as the director 

 of the observatory was absent from the country. 

 Accordingly, a telegram from General Hazen 

 to President Eliot urged that by reason of its 

 eastern longitude Harvard College and New 

 England should have the honor of thus begin- 

 ning the desired reform. The people as well 

 as the railroads of New England began the 

 good work on that Sunday morning. 



By an agreement with the Western Union 

 Telegraph Company, made about 1877, that 

 company sold its time signals received from 

 the Naval Observatory to its customers 

 throughout the country who would pay for 

 them. This was, probably, the only case in 

 which a government institution cooperated 

 with a corporation to sell that which would 

 seem to be government property and without 

 any return to the Treasury. Of course the 

 telegraph companies made equivalent returns 

 to the government by allowing the free use of 

 their lines for longitude purposes, but it seemed 

 rather hard that this last concession, which 

 had been in effect since 1846, should be used 

 as an argument for maintaining a popular 

 distribution of time signals that cut under 

 or competed with the work of local astronom- 

 ical observatories. Of course on November 

 18, 1883, at the request of the telegraph com- 

 pany the Naval Observatory began sending 

 signals on the 75th standard for transmission 

 to the railroads, but its own time-balls and 

 signals for use in Washington city continued 

 to be regulated by Washington local mean 

 time until March 1, 1884. 



In conclusion it may safely be said that the 

 adoption of the present system of standard 

 hours, with all its manifold advantages, has 

 been accomplished by persons outside the 

 government service. The officials of our rail- 

 roads have lately united in ascribing the suc- 

 cessful introduction of standard time to Mr. 

 W. E. Allen, without saying a word in favor 

 of the Naval Observatory's pretensions. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Dr. George E. Kunz, of New York City, 

 has been appointed by the State Department 

 a delegate to the International Congress for 

 the Study of Radiology and Ionization, which 

 will be held in Liege, Belgium this month. 



We learn from the American Geologist that 

 Professor T. C. Chamberlin has been ap- 

 pointed a member of the Illinois Geological 

 Survey Board. The other members are ex- 

 officio Governor Deneen and President James, 

 of the State University, 



Mr. E. C. Chilcott, agronomist of the 

 South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion, has been appointed expert in connection 

 with the cereal work of the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



Dr. Walter Schiller has been appointed 

 head of the geological division of the Museo 

 de la Plata and geologist of Buenos Ayres. 



On the occasion of the installation of Mr. 

 Andrew Carnegie as lord rector of St. An- 

 drew's University on October 17, the univer- 

 sity will confer the honorary degree of doctor 

 of laws on Mr. Carnegie; Mr. Whitelaw Peid, 

 the American ambassador to Great Britain; 

 Mr. Charlemagne Tower, the American am- 

 bassador to Germany; Bishop Potter of New 

 York; Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president 

 of Columbia University, and Dr. William J. 

 Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum at 

 Pittsburg. 



A MEMORIAL in honor of Professor Eriedrich 

 von Esmarch, the eminent surgeon of the 

 University of Kiel, has been erected in his 

 native place, Tonningen in Schleswig-Holstein. 

 Professor von Esmarch was present at the un- 

 veiling, which took place on August 6. 



M. ViDAL DE LA Blache has received the 

 medal of the Paris Geographical Society in 

 recognition of his work, ' Tableau de la 

 Geographic de la Erance,' which is the intro- 

 duction to the ' Histoire de Erance,' published 

 under the direction of M. E. Lavisse. 



Secretary Wilson has made public the re- 

 port of Solicitor George P. McCabe on the 

 investigation of the charge that Dr. Daniel 

 E. Salmon, head of the Bureau of Animal 



