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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1034 



"Wednesday, a.m. Industrial Bacteriology, R. E. 

 Buchanan, Ames, Iowa. 



Wednesday, p.m. Sanitary Bacteriology. 



Thursday, a.m. Infection and Immunity, J. A. 

 Kolmer, Medical Dep't University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, Philadelphia, Pa. 



Thursday, P.M. Ventilation, C.-E. A. Winslow, 

 25 West 45th Street, New York City, N. Y. 



On Thursday afternoon the session will be 

 devoted to a symposium on Ventilation with 

 Section K of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science. Professor O.-E. A. 

 Winslow has this program in charge. The 

 local committee of arrangements consists of D. 

 H. Bergey, Jos. Leidy, Jr., Jos. McFarland 

 and A. Parker Hitchens, chairman. The sec- 

 retary is A. Parker Hitchens, Glenolden, Pa. 



The eminent French physicist. Professor 

 Oh. Fabry, of the Faculte des Sciences, Mar- 

 seilles, is devoting himself to radiography for 

 the benefit of the wounded in the war. He 

 fears an exhaustion of the French supply of 

 X-ray tubes and has written to an American 

 friend, requesting that makers and dealers in 

 such supplies should communicate with him at 

 once, giving prices of their supplies and tubes 

 for medical and surgical purposes. 



" Mendel's Vererbungstheorien aus dem 

 Englischen iibersetzt von alma Winekler mit 

 einem Begleitwort von R von Wettstein." 

 Teubner, Leipzig, 1914, is a German edition 

 of Dr. W. Bateson's well-known book recently 

 reviewed in these columns. It will be useful 

 to those who read German more readily than 

 English, or by preference. 



Dr. Henry Chandler Cowles, associate pro- 

 fessor of plant ecology in the University of 

 Chicago, was engaged some time ago by the 

 United States Department of Justice to make 

 an investigation of a large tract of timber land 

 in Arkansas which had been originally sur- 

 Teyed as lake. Professor Cowles's services as 

 an ecological expert were secured to determine 

 from the nature of the timber and other evi- 

 dence whether or not the area could possibly 

 have been lake as recently as the time of the 

 original survey in 1847. The investigation 

 was made and testimony given, and the United 

 States judge of that district gave a sweeping 



decision in favor of the government's conten- 

 tion. Among the findings was that none of 

 the areas returned as lake had any evidence 

 of a beach line such as should have existed. 

 But the most striking evidence of the fraudu- 

 lency of the original survey was the existence 

 of immense upland trees growing over all the 

 areas, many of the trees being from two hun- 

 dred to three hundred years old, and some of 

 them from five hundred to a thousand. 



" The Production of Explosives in the 

 United States during the Calendar Tear 1913 " 

 has just been published by the United States 

 Bureau of Mines. The total production of ex- 

 plosives, according to the figures received 

 from manufacturers, was 463,514,881 pounds 

 (231,757 short tons), as compared with 489,- 

 393,131 pounds (244,696 short tons), for 1912. 

 This production is segregated as follows : black 

 powder, 194,146,747 pounds ; " high " explo- 

 sives other than permissible explosives, 241,- 

 682,364 pounds, and permissible explosives, 

 27,685,770 pounds. These figures represent a 

 decrease of 36,146,622 pounds of black powder 

 and an increase of 7,212,872 pounds of high ex- 

 plosives and 3,055,500 pounds of permissible 

 explosives. As explosives are essential to 

 mining, and the use of improved types of ex- 

 plosives lessens the dangers of mining, the 

 Bureau of Mines undertook the compilation of 

 information showing the total amount of ex- 

 plosives manufactured and used in the United 

 States, its first report dealing with the year 

 1912. This is the second technical paper relat- 

 ing solely to the production of explosives that 

 the bureau has issued. It is expected that 

 similar publications will be compiled annually, 

 and that with the cooperation of the manu- 

 facturers these statements will be published 

 within a few weeks after the end of each year. 

 The figures show that in 1902 only 11,300 

 pounds of permissible explosives was used in 

 coal mining, whereas in 1913 the quantity so 

 used was 21,804,285 pounds. The quantity of 

 permissible explosives used in , the United 

 States is larger than in a number of foreign 

 countries. In 1912 it represented about five 

 per cent, of the total quantity of explosives 

 produced, and in 1913 six per cent. The total 



