August 12, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



199 



forded them for productive work. An 

 interesting suggestion in this connection 

 has been made by Professor Cattell. In a 

 letter to the New York Evening Post^ he 

 proposed that there should be a division of 

 t'ae office by the appointment of both a 

 president and a chancellor. The general 

 idea underlying the proposal is that the 

 president should be the leader of the fac- 

 ulty in educational affairs and that the 

 chancellor should represent the university 

 locally and before the world. It is to be 

 hoped that questions of this nature will 

 continue to be discussed freely and frankly 

 both by university presidents and pro- 

 fessors. The subject might perhaps be 

 discussed profitably by the Association of 

 American Universities. That body should, 

 however, realize, as a preliminary to any 

 discussion, that there can be no real asso- 

 ciation of American universities in which 

 the faculties of the universities are not 

 represented. J. E. Creighton 



Cornell University. 



REPORT OF TEE PERMANENT G0MMIS8I0N 



OF THE INTERNATIONAL 8EISM0L0G- 



ICAL ASSOCIATION 



The writer attended the conference held at 

 Zermatt, Switzerland, August 30 to Septem- 

 ber 3, 1909, as the delegate for Canada. It 

 was well attended. Of the twenty-three coun- 

 tries forming the association twenty were 

 represented, as follows: Austria, Belgium, 

 Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, England, 

 France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, 

 Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Eoumania, 

 Russia, Servia, Spain and Switzerland. Re- 

 gret was expressed that the United States did 

 not send a representative. Besides the dele- 

 gates, other scientists were present, making 

 the total in attendance 42. 



Professor A. Schuster presided, and Dr. 

 Hepites, of Bukarest, was elected vice-presi- 

 dent for the remaining two years, when the 

 general meeting will be held in July, 1911, at 

 Manchester, England. 



'October 5, 1901. 



Mention may be made of several reports of 

 committees appointed at The Hague meeting 

 in 1907. The one on bibliography recom- 

 mended that arrangements be made with the 

 International Catalogue of the Royal Society 

 for the publication in one volume of all papers 

 on seismology. 



The committee on " Catalogue," i. e., for the 

 publication of the catalogue for the earth- 

 quakes of 1906, held several meetings before 

 a compromise was effected between different 

 views on the character of classification, re- 

 gional or chronological. Considerable ex- 

 pense is involved in the preparation of a cat- 

 alogue, hence its contents should serve sci- 

 entific ends especially. 



From the report two years ago to this as- 

 sociation of The Hague meeting it will per- 

 haps be recalled that makers of instruments 

 had been invited to submit for competition a 

 simple seismograph, with magnification 

 forty to fifty and costing in the neighborhood 

 of seventy-five dollars. The testing of the 

 apparatus was to be done at the Central 

 Bureau at Strassburg, and the award was en- 

 trusted to a committee of five members. 

 Three instruments were submitted and sub- 

 sequently tested. The committee on instru- 

 ments found that the terms of competitions 

 had not been rigorously adhered to ; that the 

 price set for an efiicient instrument was too 

 low and not in keeping with the precision re- 

 quired in seismological work of the present 

 day; that however good work had been done 

 by the manufacturers for the above seventy- 

 five dollars; and that no prize be awarded, but 

 instead the money, some $250, be equally 

 divided between the three Inanufacturers, in 

 a measure as compensation for their efforts. 

 Emphasis was laid in the report on the fact 

 that the first consideration of a scientific in- 

 strument is efficiency ; the cost being a second- 

 ary consideration. 



Nearly every country represented presented 

 a report on its respective seismological serv- 

 ice. 



Of the numerous papers presented there 

 were several of particular interest. Pro- 

 fessor Hecker presented the results of his ob- 



