June 16, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



847 



from high water has been serious and wide- 

 spread and the waters are still rising. Pro- 

 fessor Meyer stated that if such regulation of 

 these waters as the International Joint Com- 

 mission will soon recommend to the govern- 

 ment of the United States and Canada had 

 been in force, most, if not all, of the damage 

 could have been prevented. 



A SECOND relief expedition is to be sent out 

 from the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory and the American Geographical Society 

 in the hope of rescuing Donald B. MacMillan 

 and the members of the Crocker Land Expe- 

 dition sent out in 1913 by the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, the American Geo- 

 graphical Society and the University of Illinois. 

 The party is believed to be several hundred 

 miles northwest of northern Greenland. The 

 first relief expedition is frozen in at Parker 

 Snow Bay, 150 miles south of Etah. The sec- 

 ond expedition will try to join forces with the 

 first and then proceed to Etah. The steamship 

 Danmarh has been chartered for the trip, and 

 the sum of $11,000 has already been pledged — 

 $6,000 by the American Museinn and its 

 friends and $5,000 by the American Geograph- 

 ical Society. According to George H. Sher- 

 wood, assistant secretary of the museiun, the 

 members of the expeditions are in a serious 

 plight, and there is urgent need of m.ore funds 

 to finance the new relief expedition. 



A DESPATCH from Montevideo, dated June 6, 

 states that a relief expedition for the rescue of 

 the twenty-two members of Lieut. Sir Ernest 

 Shackleton's Antarctic expedition left behind 

 on Elephant Island will start immediately. 



The Bureau of American Ethnology of the 

 Smithsonian Institution is manifesting con- 

 siderable activity in archeological and ethno- 

 logical research in the field at the present time. 

 Mr. Neil M. Judd and Dr. Walter Hough have 

 been temporarily detailed by the National Mu- 

 seum for the purpose of conducting archeolog- 

 ical investigations in southern Utah and west- 

 ern New Mexico, respectively, and Dr. J. 

 Walter Fewkes is engaged in work of a similar 

 nature northeast of the Hopi villages in north- 

 ern Arizona. Mr. John P. Harrington is de- 

 voting his attention to gathering the final 



material necessary to the completion of an ex- 

 haustive memoir on the practically extinct 

 Chumash Indians of southern California; Mr. 

 J. N. B. Hewitt is among the Iroquois of 

 Ontario; Dr. Truman Michelson has resumed 

 his studies among the Eox Indians of Iowa, 

 and Mr. James Mooney has taken the field 

 for the purpose of continuing his studies 

 among the Cherokee of North Carolina. Mr. 

 Francis LaFlesche has recently returned from 

 a trip to the Osage tribe of Oklahoma after 

 recording additional material pertaining to 

 the sacred ceremonies of that people. Miss 

 Frances Densmore will shortly resume her 

 studies of Indian music in the field, special 

 attention this summer being devoted to the 

 Hidatsa Indians of North Dakota, while Dr. 

 L. J. Frachtenberg is still engaged in studying 

 the almost extinct Indian languages of Oregon. 



At a meeting of the Washington Academy 

 of Sciences, on May 11, Dr. Erwin F. Smith, 

 of the Bureau of Plant Industry, delivered an 

 address on " Eesemiblances between Crown 

 Gall in Plants and Human Cancer." This ad- 

 dress will be printed in Science. 



Professor Arthur B. Lamb, of Harvard 

 University, lectured on " Induced Reactions," 

 in the Havemeyer Chemical Laboratory, New 

 York University, on May 12. 



The Halley Lecture at the University of 

 Oxford was delivered on May 20, by Dr. G. W. 

 Walker, late fellow of Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge. His subject was " The Measurement 

 of Earthquakes." 



Dr. Charles B. Alexander, of New Tork, 

 a regent of the University of the State of New 

 York, gave a dinner in Albany last week in 

 honor of Dr. John J. Carty, president of the 

 National Institute of Electrical Engineers, and 

 Professor Michael Pupiu, Serbia's Consul to 

 this country and professor in Columbia Uni- 

 versity. The guests inspected the instruments 

 contrived and used by Professor Joseph Henry 

 while a teacher in the Albany Academy in ma^ 

 king the first successful experiments on long- 

 distance electric transmission beginning in 

 1827. Professor Pupin pledged himself to 

 raise $15,000 if a like sum were raised to erect 



