552 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1033 



met and rescue crews. A complete display of 

 rescue apparatus and safety lamps will be 

 given in a glass smoke-room. Tests of safety 

 lamps will be made, showing their tendency, 

 under unfavorable conditions, to ignite explo- 

 sive gas, and also showing methods of testing 

 for explosive gas by means of their caps. An 

 exhibit of the physical and chemical char- 

 acteristics and constituents of explosives is 

 being arranged. Visitors going through the 

 exhibition mine will regain the surface through 

 the radium booth in which actual radium 

 emanations will be shown. Surrounding this 

 radium booth, there will be complete exhibits 

 of the various radium ores and of radium 

 products. The metallurgy of various products 

 will be shown by a comprehensive exhibit. 

 The opportunity for increased eificiency in 

 the use of fuels will be demonstrated by a 

 device showing the proportionate amounts of 

 fuels which go to make up the various losses 

 incident to consumption in comparison with 

 that which ultimately goes to useful purposes. 

 Typical analyses of coal from the various fields 

 will be shown by models and samples, as will 

 also the yield of coke and by-products obtained 

 by various coking processes. It is expected to 

 show smoke-preventing and smoke-producing 

 methods of stoking by means of an ingenious 

 motion-picture device. An officer of the bu- 

 reau will give his whole attention to visitors. 

 Copies of the bureau's publications will be 

 available for free distribution to visitors who 

 may be particularly interested. This exhibit, 

 in connection with the exhibition mine imme- 

 diately beneath the bureau's space, should be 

 interesting and instructive to those engaged 

 in the mining industry and to the general 

 public. 



Mr. W. G. Vieth has sent the Geographical 

 Journal an account of a new island hitherto 

 uncharted in the Kazan-retto group (Volcano 

 Islands). Mr. Vieth left Yokohama in the 

 yacht Tilihum II. on January 24, 1914, bound 

 for Brisbane, Australia. It was while anchor- 

 ing at Point Lloyd, Bonin Islands, that news 

 was received that a Japanese resident on 

 Naka-Iwojima (Sulphur Island), the middle 



one of the Kazan-retto group, had just arrived 

 there reporting the phenomenon. It was at 

 once decided to alter the course of the Tilihum 

 II., in order to investigate the matter. When 

 the yacht cleared Point Lloyd, a Japanese 

 man-of-war had just arrived there with orders 

 of a like nature, but as the latter stayed a few 

 days at Point Lloyd, Mr. Vieth's boat was the 

 first to arrive at the scene. " At about 9 a.m. 

 on February 14," he writes, " we sighted a 

 cloud of thick blackish smoke rapidly shooting 

 up from the sea in column shape. About noon 

 we came quite close to the island, which is of 

 circular form, about 1 mile in diameter, 600 

 feet high, with a crater in the center, opening 

 to the southeast. It is 3 miles distant in north- 

 westerly direction from San Augustino, the 

 southernmost of the Volcano group. All these 

 measures are calculated only, as we did not 

 attempt a landing, the violent eruptions at 

 short intervals, sometimes accompanied by a 

 rumbling noise, preventing our approaching 

 nearer than, say, one third of a mile. Plenty 

 of pumice-stone was floating in the sea in 

 patches. The island itself shows the same 

 yellowish-gray color, and seems to consist in 

 bulk of the same light material. The neigh- 

 boring San Augustino is of much greater 

 height, clothed with vegetation, and rises 

 steeply from the sea. It is uninhabited. The 

 new island bears no sign of vegetation as yet." 

 It is asserted that a similar island had risen in 

 the same spot about ten years ago, but soon 

 disappeared again. 



The European situation has called attention 

 sharply to the dependence of this country upon 

 Germany for its potash supply, some 12 or 

 more million dollars' worth of which is used 

 annually in the United States for fertilizer. 

 Another necessary mineral fertilizer for which 

 the United States is entirely dependent upon 

 a foreign country is sodium nitrate, over 21 

 million dollars' worth of which was imported 

 from Chile last year. Deposits of sodium and 

 potassium nitrate are known in Utah, Nevada, 

 California, Oregon, Montana and New Mexico 

 and have been described in publications of the 

 Geological Survey and Bureau of Soils, but 

 thus far no material of this kind has been 



