306 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1079 



The Reverend Alphone Schwitalia, S.J., pro- 

 fessor of biology at St. Louis University, and 

 two other members of the party, have returned 

 from a medical inspection trip to British Hon- 

 duras. Dr. Edward Nelson Tobey, assistant 

 city bacteriologist and a lecturer at the uni- 

 versity, also was a member of the expedition, 

 but it is feared he perished with the steamer 

 Marowijne, which has not been heard from 

 since the West Indian hurricane swept through 

 the Yucatan channel on August 13. 



A MEMORIAL to Johann C. Eeil, the anatom- 

 ist, has been erected in Halle. It stands in 

 front of the university clinic, the seat of his 

 labors until called to Berlin in 1810. He died 

 in 1813, aged fifty-five years. 



The death is announced of Dr. B. Fisher, 

 professor of hygiene and bacteriology in the 

 University of Kiel. 



The Paris Academy of Medicine has re- 

 ceived a legacy from Dr. M. Sigaut of 8,000 

 francs to be awarded for a research on cancer 

 of the digestive tract. 



The exhibit arranged by the New York 

 State Museum for the department of mines 

 and metallurgy at the Panama-Pacific Inter- 

 national Exposition was awarded a grand prize, 

 besides one medal of honor, five gold medals, 

 fifteen silver medals and nine bronze medals. 



The Coast and Geodetic Survey informs the 

 American Geographical Society of some re- 

 cent significant soundings by the steamer 

 Pathfinder in the southwest part of the Philip- 

 pines area. The Cagayanes, Cavilli and Arena 

 Islands, Tubbataha and Maeander Eeefs, in 

 the Sulu Sea, are apparently coral capped 

 summits of a submerged mountain range ex- 

 tending for 200 miles southwesterly from the 

 southwest part of Panay Island. They rise 

 from depths of 6,000 to 12,000 feet with a 

 stupendous submarine slope. The soundings 

 indicate that this range divides the Sulu Sea 

 into two deep basins by joining the shelf or 

 plateau extending northwest of Borneo and 

 east of Balabac Strait. Bancoran Island and 

 Moyune Reef are elevations at the south end 

 of the northwest basin. The Tubbataha Keys 

 and Maeander Beef are the only elevations 



without vegetation. They are steep faced, sim- 

 ilar in structure and consist of an accumula- 

 tion of dead corals, coral rock and coral sand 

 cemented into a greater or less degree of com- 

 pactness. The pounding of the sea has ac- 

 cumulated the coral sand in the center to an 

 elevation of five or six feet. 



The Field Museum of Natural History has 

 recently acquired a large collection of verte- 

 brate fossils from the asphaltum beds of south- 

 ern California. This collection consists of 

 more than two thousand specimens varying 

 from skeletons to single bones. Among; them 

 are mounted and mountable skeletons of the 

 saber-tooth tiger (Smilodon) and the large 

 wolf, Canis dims, together with numerous 

 series of skulls and skeletal parts of these ani- 

 mals. There are also skulls of Megalonyx, 

 Bison, Teratornis, Gymnogyps and Cathartes. 

 Other genera represented are Felis, Camelops, 

 Mastodon, Equus, Gervus and Antelocapra. 

 Most, if not all, of these specimens are of 

 Pleistocene age. For this valuable collection 

 the museum is indebted to the generosity of 

 Messrs. E. E. Ayer, M. A. Ryerson, W. R. 

 Linn and E. B. Butler, members of its board 

 of trustees. 



There has just been issued by the Bureau 

 of Standards a paper describing briefly the 

 methods of calibrating and using bomb calo- 

 rimeters, such as are used in determining the 

 amount of heat available from a given weight 

 of coal or coke or other combustible. The 

 amount of heat which can be obtained de- 

 pends largely upon the kind and quality of 

 fuel. When purchased in large quantities, 

 therefore, a fuel is commonly tested to deter- 

 mine the amount of heat available per pound, 

 and the price paid depends upon the results of 

 these tests. The instrument used for such 

 tests is called the bomb calorimeter and con- 

 sists essentially of a steel shell or " bomb " in 

 which a small weighed sample of the fuel can 

 be burned in pure oxygen gas. The bomb is 

 immersed in a known amount of water before 

 the sample is ignited, the heat produced 

 warms the water, and by suitable measure- 

 ments of the change of temperature the amount 

 of heat can be calculated. Provision is made 



