September 3, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



307 



by the Bureau of Standards for standardizing 

 bomb calorimeters by means of standard sam- 

 ples of certain pure materials, viz., sugar, 

 napthtbalene and benzoic acid. By burning 

 known amounts of these substances in the 

 bomb the observer determines the amount of 

 heat required to raise the temperature of the 

 bomb together with the proper amount of water 

 one degree. This being determined the amount 

 of heat furnished by a given sample of coal 

 burned in the same bomb with the same amount 

 of water can be found. Thus these standard 

 samples, which are sent all over the United 

 States, serve as standards of heat and make 

 it possible to get the same results from tests 

 made anywhere in the country, much as the 

 use of the standards of length and of mass 

 makes a yard or a pound the same in all parts 

 of the country. Copies of this paper known 

 as Circular No. 11, " Standardization of 

 Bomb Calorimeters," may be obtained without 

 charge upon application to the Bureau of 

 Standards, Washington, D. C. 



The Journal of the American Medical As- 

 sociation reports that Mr. James Berry, who is 

 at the head of a British hospital mission at 

 Vrnjachka Banya, has collected from ofiBcial 

 sources figures which show that ninety-three 

 Serbian physicians have died out of a total of 

 38Y alive at the beginning of the war. Of 

 these, no fewer than eighty-two succumbed to 

 typhus fever, and only one was killed in battle. 

 These figures contrast remarkably with those 

 of the recent Turkish war in which Serbia lost 

 only two physicians. Of the foreign physi- 

 cians who have come to her aid in this war, 

 thirty-five have died from typhus or typhoid 

 fever. They include three British, four Amer- 

 ican, two Belgian, several Greeks, and six 

 others. 



UNIVEBSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



Dr. John Lee Coulter has been appointed 

 ■dean of the College of Agriculture and di- 

 rector of the Experiment Station of the West 

 Virginia University. He goes from the George 

 Peabody College, and will take the place of E. 

 D. Sanderson, who resigned about a year ago. 



At the Johns Hopkins University, the degree 

 of bachelor of science in education has been 

 established in connection with the college 

 courses for teachers and the summer courses. 

 The degree will be open to men and women. 

 The regulations concerning the work for the 

 new degree will be determined by an advisory 

 committee of the faculty. The title of director 

 of the college course for teachers and of the 

 summer courses has been assigned to Professor 

 Edward F. Buchner. 



Dr. Oein Tugman, of the stafl^ of the research 

 laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company, 

 has been elected associate professor of physics 

 at the University of Utah. 



Dr. L. Chas. Eaiford, of the department of 

 chemistry of the University of Chicago, has 

 been elected professor of chemistry in the 

 Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 

 lege. 



Dr. J. A. Menzies has been appointed pro- 

 fessor of physiology in the University of Dur- 

 ham College of Medicine, Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESFONDENCE 



ANOTHER REASON FOR SAVING THE GENUS 



I AM writing to second Dr. F. B. Sumner's 

 plea for the saving of the genus.^ I am sure 

 he has the sympathy of the great mass of 

 workers in non-taxonomic biology. Leaving 

 aside the question of expressing relationship 

 in the generic name which Sumner has so well 

 stated, there is another point that he has not 

 sufficiently emphasized. It is by the genera 

 that animals and plants are catalogued. In 

 the Nautilus, Vol. 28, February, 1915, the 

 writer made this plea. I illustrated it by the 

 form on which I had been working for the past 

 eight years, the genus Lymncea. I quote the 

 following passage from that paper : 



The most recent elassifieatiou of this group is 

 that of F. C Baker in his admirable " Lymnaeidije 

 of North and Middle America" (Chicago Acad- 

 emy of Sciences Pub. No. 3, 1911), p. 120. Whereas 

 the older classifications considered shell characters 

 alone, this author "proposed to classify the 



1 ' ' Some Eeasons for Saving the Genus, ' ' Sci- 

 ence, Vol. XLL, No. 1068, p. 899. 



