240 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1103 



ern College for Women, Oxford, $100,000 to- 

 ward an endowment fund of $500,000; Mil- 

 waukee-Downer College .for Women, Milwau- 

 kee, Wisconsin, $100,000 toward an endowment 

 fund of $500,000. Including the foregoing, the 

 General Education Board has since its organi- 

 zation thirteen years ago appropriated to col- 

 lies $12,322,460 toward a total sum of $57,- 

 375,525 to be raised. 



The board of trustees of the Carnegie Insti- 

 tute, Pittsburgh, announce the gift of $250,000 

 from the Carnegie corporation of New York, 

 the money to be used for the purchase of 

 ground north of the present campus. 



The formal opening of Alden Hall of Biol- 

 ogy of Allegheny College took place on Feb- 

 ruary 4. Dr. W. J. Holland, director of the 

 Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, gave the prin- 

 cipal address on "Biology, a Cultural and 

 Practical Study." The building is 60 feet by 

 120 feet, built of gray vitrified brick and terra 

 cotta, with a Spanish tile roof, and is well 

 equipped throughout. Professor C. A. Dar- 

 ling is in charge of the department. 



It is stated in Nature that the number of 

 undergraduates in residence at Cambridge this 

 term is 665, as against 1,227 during the corre- 

 sponding term last year, and about 3,600 in a 

 normal term. Amongst the 11,000 members of 

 the university in the land, sea and air services, 

 1,723 casualties have been notified; 697 have 

 been killed and 892 wounded. 



The Berlin correspondent of the Journal of 

 the American Medical Association writes that 

 dujing the semester preceding the opening of 

 the war, 79,077 students (of whom 4,500 were 

 women and about 9,000 foreigners) attended 

 the fifty-two universities and other higher in- 

 stitutions of the German Empire. Of this 

 number 60,943 (4,117 women, 4,100 foreigners) 

 were enrolled in the twenty-one imiversities ; 

 12,232 (82 women, 2,500 foreigners) were en- 

 rolled in the eleven technical schools. The six 

 schools of commerce (Berlin, Cologne, Frank- 

 fort, Leipzig, Mannheim and Munich) had 

 2,625 students, and the four veterinary col- 

 leges (Berlin, Dresden, Hanover and Munich) 

 had 1,404 students. The three argicultural 



colleges had 938 students. Three schools of 

 mining had 668 students, and 267 students 

 were registered in the four schools of forestry. 

 During the first semester following the begin- 

 ning of the war, the total number of matricu- 

 lants fell to 64,700 in forty-seven of these in- 

 stitutions. The four schools of forestry were 

 closed, and the veterinary school in Munich 

 became a part of the university. During the 

 winter of 1914^15, about 50,000 of these stu- 

 dents were in the field or available for service; 

 that is, 75.75 per cent, of the 66,000 German 

 male students registered at the beginning of 

 the war. Of the 66,000 German male students 

 who were registered at the end of the summer 

 of 1915, only 12,000 are still in attendance at 

 the schools so that about 54,000, or 81.81 per 

 cent., of German higher students are now en- 

 rolled in the army. Of the 13,785 university 

 students registered during the smnmer semester 

 of 1870, only 4,400 (32 per cent.) were at the 

 front, and 3,200 of this nvunber fell in the field. 



Dr. Howard E. Pulling has been appointed 

 to an instructorship in plant physiology in the 

 Johns Hopkins University for the current 

 year. 



Dr. Egbert Lewis, assistant biochemist at 

 the United States Pellagra Hospital, Spartan- 

 burg, S. C, has been elected professor of physi- 

 ology in the University of Colorado. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



ATMOSPHERIC TRANSMISSION 



To THE Editor of Science: In Science for 

 December 3, 1915, page 802, line 27, Mr. Very 

 speaks as positively as ever of the diurnal vari- 

 ability of the transmission of the atmosphere 

 and the incorrectness of neglecting its effect 

 in reducing solar constant observations. Does 

 the evidence to the contrary of the observations 

 of September 20 and September 21, 1914, when 

 the sun was observed at Mount Wilson from 

 sun-rise to 10 o'clock, weigh nothing at all 

 with him?-"- 



Secondly. In his recent paper on "Earth- 



1 See ' ' New Evidence on the Intensity of Solar 

 Radiation Outside the Atmosphere, ' ' by Abbot, 

 Fowle and Aldrich, Smithsonian Miscellaneous 

 Collections, Volume 65^ No. 4, 1915. 



