870 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 700 



Tombave, now connected witli the University 

 of Pennsylvania, he will he employed in in- 

 stituting modern methods of agriculture in 

 Manchuria. 



Mr. Eoy C. Andrews, of the department of 

 mammalogy of the American Museum of Nat- 

 ural History, has" gone to Vancouver Island 

 for the purpose of spending several months at 

 the whaling stations on that coast. His work 

 will be the securing of photographs, notes and 

 measurements, which will furnish the data for 

 a preliminary study of the Pacific species of 

 whales. 



Mr. V. Stefansson, the ethnologist, who 

 spent the winter of 1906-7 among Esquimaux 

 in the region of the delta of the Mackenzie 

 Eiver, is preparing to start for the mouth of 

 the Coppermine Eiver, about 460 miles east of 

 the Mackenzie, to spend another year among 

 the natives. 



Mr. C. G. Abbot, director of the Smith- 

 sonian Astrophysical Observatory, has left 

 Washington for Mt. Wilson, near Pasadena, 

 California, where he will continue observa- 

 tions, conducted for a number of years both 

 in Washington and in California, on the 

 amount of heat received on earth from the 

 sun. 



Professor George P. Merrill, head of the 

 department of geology of the United States 

 National Museum, has gone to Coone Butte, 

 Arizona, to be present at a number of deep 

 borings to be made in the so-called Canyon 

 Diablo crater, the cause of which has been a 

 puzzle to geologists ever since it was brought 

 to their attention. This crater-form depres- 

 sion in the desert is nearly three quarters of 

 a mile' across and about sis hundred feet deep. 

 Some men of science have believed it to be an 

 extinct volcano and others, to be the record of 

 the impact of a huge meteor which struck the 

 earth centuries ago. Professor Merrill made 

 a study of the depression last year, and in 

 drawing conclusions upon the evidence brought 

 back, he stated : " This, of course, absolutely 

 precludes the formation of the crater by any 

 deep-seated agency, and I have been forced to 

 consider an origin by impact of a stellar 

 body." The present borings in search of a 



buried meteor or meteoric irons and other 

 phenomena may furnish additional material to 

 account for its origin. 



The Magnetic Survey yacht Galilee, char- 

 tered by the Carnegie Institution of Washing- 

 ton and under the command of W. J. Peters, 

 returned to her home port, San Francisco, on 

 May 22, after an absence of nearly three years. 

 The total length of the cruises traversed in the 

 Pacific Ocean during this period is about 

 65,000 miles. This closes the ocean magnetic 

 work for the present until the construction of 

 a vessel specially adapted for the work has 

 been completed. Plans for the new vessel are 

 now being prepared by Henry J. Gielow, naval 

 architect and engineer. 



Dr. W. J. Holland, the director of the 

 Carnegie Museum, has completed the installa- 

 tion of the cast of the Diplodocus presented by 

 Mr. Andrew Carnegie to the German emperor. 

 It stands in the Lichthof of the Zoological 

 Museum at Berlin and occupies the entire 

 west side of the great room. On May 15 

 Dr. Holland went to Paris to install a similar 

 replica in the National Museum in the Jardin 

 des Plantes. While in Berlin Dr. Holland' 

 attended the sessions of the International 

 Anatomical Congress. On May 5 he addressed 

 a meeting of the Gesellschaft N aturforschend- 

 en Freunde zu Berlin and on May 13 a dinner 

 in his honor was given, at which the cultus- 

 minister and the heads of all the departments 

 of the university and of the various learned 

 societies in Germany were present by invita- 

 tion. 



We learn from Nature that the presi- 

 dent of the Board of Trade has ap- 

 pointed a committee to prepare a program 

 for the consideration of the delegates to the 

 International Conference on Electrical Units- 

 and Standards to be held in London in the 

 ensuing autumn, and to make arrangements 

 for the reception and assembly of the delegates 

 attending the conference. The members of 

 the committee are Mr. G. E. Askwith, K.C.; 

 Sir John Gavey, C.B.; Dr. E. T. Glazebrook, 

 P.E.S.; Major P. A. MacMahon, E.E.S.; 

 Major W. A. J. O'Meara, E.E., and Mr. A. P.- 



